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Where Do I Stand When the Foundation Gives Way?
From the series: Good News Then and Now
Jeremiah 7:4; Luke 20:2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 29, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We are on a 2000-year journey, a 2000-year survey of the history of Christian
doctrine, or as it is called, the history of dogma, and we are looking at the history
of doctrinal development because I want to demonstrate to you that, if we are
about the re-imagining of the faith for our day, we are only doing what has always
been done, not always voluntarily, but out of necessity, the need to continue to
reinterpret the event of God in Jesus Christ in every new age and historical
context in order that it might make sense, in order that it might be meaningful, in
order that it might be transformative.
We noted three weeks ago that the formation of Christian doctrine arose out of
that first great crisis of the Christian Church, the Jesus movement poised for the
imminent return of Jesus as the Lord of Glory to judge the earth, which didn’t
happen. And that early Church, confident that the end of the age was so near, had
never contemplated having to live in history. What did the event of Jesus Christ
mean, if history was ongoing? What did it mean, then, to be a Christian, a
follower of Jesus in a world that obviously wasn’t ending? Out of that initial crisis
came the formation of the early Catholic tradition, which did not come about
easily. To read those stories of the post-Apostolic Church is to read of
tremendous conflict, tremendous division, great tensions, outstanding leaders on
respective sides of issues trying to hammer out what in the world God had done
in this Jesus. The Church eventually regularized itself. It took some centuries,
and finally it established what it believed about what God had done in Jesus:
thus, the appearance of orthodoxy, that is, proper belief, correct belief. And also,
the possibility of heresy, for now there was a line set down, there were boundaries
drawn, and those who were outside of the pale were marked as heretical to the
established, accepted faith of the Church.
That early Church, we noted a couple of weeks ago, began to take on some stature
and it was greatly enhanced when the Emperor Constantine converted and when
a successor established Christianity as the religion of the empire. The
establishment of Christianity, which I was taught was a great providential act of
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God, might well have been the point at which the Church began to lose its soul
because, with its establishment, now having the power of the throne behind it, it
grew not only in its faith understanding, but in power, and with power came
eventual degeneration and decay and corruption (you learned about that last
week), an institution that became so insensitive to the needs of people that it
could no longer deal with the human experience of one like Martin Luther, whose
experience was the catalyst for the shattering of the institution and the
emergence of the Protestant tradition. Now we have three major Church families.
In 1054, Eastern Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Latin tradition came apart;
the Pope excommunicated the Patriarch, the Patriarch returned the favor, and
from that point on, 1054, the 11thcentury, the Christian Church, which until that
time had been one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, became Eastern and
Western. Now in the 16th century, with the shattering of the Western Church and
the emergence of Protestantism, there was born a third major family and we have
it to this day, three major groupings, Protestantism having continued to splinter
until we could sing the song, "It’s a Many-Splintered Thing."
But, while there were differences between those three bodies, they maintained
the core that was arrived at in those early centuries, the doctrine of the Trinity,
the two natures of Jesus Christ, truly God, truly human, and much else they
shared. But, there were differences, as well, and good reason for division, of
course. But, there was one thing in which Orthodoxy, the Roman Catholic Church
and Protestantism were totally agreed, and that was that they were institutions
with absolute authority. If you ask an Orthodox Patriarch, he would say the
authority is in the ongoing tradition of the Church. If you would ask the Pope in
Rome, he would say the authority is in the teaching office of the Church which he
embodies. If you would ask John Calvin or Martin Luther, they would have said
the authority lies in the written word of God.
Whether it was tradition or Church or Bible, the whole Christian Church in the
16th century was a Church that was marked by authoritarian claim, the claim that
the content of its faith was the consequence of a supernatural revelation from
heaven, and what the Church taught was to be accepted on the basis of authority,
believed, and obeyed, not questioned. You did not need to think; you only needed
to understand what was already given, what was proclaimed, what was declared,
the dogmatic foundation of the Church.
Then the modern era dawned. Whenever one does a periodization of history,
there will be fuzzy boundaries and some disagreement, but I think that we can
say without too much fear of refutation that the modern era of which we are still a
part, although people talk about the post-modern phase we’re in, nonetheless, we
are modern people and the modern era began about 1650, the middle point of the
17th century to the present, and the modern period was marked by the throwing
off of all forms of authoritarian claim and the insistence on the empirical
observation and investigation of all truth claims. While that modern movement
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began with the advent of the natural sciences, and Francis Bacon formulated the
scientific method in the early stages, those scientific investigations did not seem
to challenge Church doctrine, but what happened immediately was a new way of
thinking, a new way of knowing, and the movement from the medieval world to
the modern world represents a seismic shift in human history and human
culture. Modernity, of which we are a part, is marked by critical thinking. We
don’t take statements, dogmatic statements or claims just because they are
uttered on the basis of some authority, be it tradition or Church or Bible. We
investigate; we experiment; we think critically about the question, and this is so
much a part of us that we don’t even think about it. It is that which marks the
whole modern period and it marks you and me in all the rest of our lives, except
not always in our religious experience. But that seismic shift in culture, in the way
of knowing and what could be known, marked the beginning of a serious
challenge to the Christian tradition.
Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher of great fame, demolished the proofs for
the existence of God, the philosophical proofs for the existence of God. His
purpose was positive; he was not anti-religious, but he wanted to show that that
way of thinking, thinking then that we had proved God’s existence, was a dead
end. He said, “I have destroyed knowledge in order to make room for faith.”
There was a young preacher in Berlin at that time who read Kant, imbibed Kant,
and recognized that the nub of the problem for the Christian tradition, now that
the modern age had dawned, was the question of authority. Friedrich
Schleiermacher was a brilliant, witty, socially desirable kind of an individual who
was assigned to be the preacher in a great hospital in Berlin, and was invited into
the social circles of that great city. He was a preacher, he was a Christian, he was
brilliant (sounds like an oxymoron, but in this case, that was true), and the
cultured, educated, sophisticated society of Berlin invited him to be a part of their
circles. They enjoyed him, and he ran with them very well. But he was a Christian,
he was a preacher, and on his 29th birthday they surprised him with a party and
they gave him a challenge and said, "Write an account of how you can still be
religious, Christian, a preacher."
He accepted the challenge and at the age of 31 published what is now a classic, On
Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers. He knew his friends. He knew what
they thought of him; he knew they thought religion was passé, and he took the
challenge right to them. He began in the first speech, of which there are five, by
saying to them, "Look, relax. I’m not going to quote the Bible; I’m not going to
quote the Church; I’m not going to quote the tradition. I am going to speak to you
as a human being; I am going to speak out of my experience, and what I am going
to say to you is rooted in my own being, in my own experience." Then he took off,
and in so doing, what Schleiermacher did was to turn the whole tradition of the
Christian Church 180 degrees for, up until that time, until the modern era, and
even at his time and even to the present, the Church, by and large across the
board, has operated on the basis of authoritarian claims, some divine revelation
that has come out of heaven embodied in a tradition, in a Church, in a book.
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Schleiermacher gave all of that up, stood, as it were, naked before his friends, and
claimed his faith and his religion as the authentic and deepest expression of his
humanity. Schleiermacher recognized that Kant had blocked the road to
dogmatic speculation and therefore if one was going to be religious after Kant,
the ground of that religious experience would have to rest in the believing
individual. And in very brilliant and sophisticated fashion, he argued for the
rooting of religion in the human subject. His claim was that to be human is to
have the feeling of absolute dependence. We didn’t create ourselves; we can’t
sustain ourselves; we are totally dependent, totally dependent on some gracious
ground that has given us life and supports and keeps us, and it was
Schleiermacher’s contention that, in those moments when that sense of
dependence comes into focus, one knows oneself to be in communion with God.
God is that foundation, that infinite mystery that upholds all, the origin and
foundation of all that is and, in the moments of our human dependency, almost
mystical moments of awareness, one knows oneself dependent which,
Schleiermacher says, is to know oneself to be in communion with God.
That synopsis hardly does justice to what Schleiermacher did in a very profound
fashion, but what he had done was radical, for he had moved from an
authoritarian claim for religious truth to a personal testimony to its reality in his
own experience. He is called the Father of Modern Theology because, in that
significant shift, he made the whole game new, and he paved the way for the
theological development of the last 200 years. You can cite all of the great names
of the theologians who have spoken and written and you will find traces of
Schleiermacher; he was the initiator. Of course, there was a counter to him; he
was rejected by many. There was a reaction, a conservative reaction and an
orthodox, confessional Church reaction against him, but nonetheless, he had
sounded a new note and he had put his finger on the problem of modernity, an
era in which we, as naturally as breathing, think, use our heads, use common
sense, and he said that goes not only when you are sending a rocket to the moon
or structuring a community education program, but that goes, as well, when you
are seeking the communion of God. He would have agreed with the statement we
used here a few weeks ago, that the heart cannot finally find true what the mind
finds false.
I find it fascinating, as I in my 64th year visit Schleiermacher seriously, that no
one ever told me that the long and tortuous pilgrimage that has been my own to
try to be a true believer with my mind engaged, was engaged and set forth
powerfully and eloquently 200 years ago. There has been in the Eastern
Orthodox tradition, the Roman Catholic tradition, and the Protestant tradition,
and all of its forms, mainline and fundamental (this is my contention now), there
has been a continuing within a medieval mind set never yet facing the acids of
modernity. I do not think the institutional Church as a whole has ever come to
terms with the modern era marked by critical thinking, even though it was done
beautifully 200 years ago.
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Why didn’t Schleiermacher carry the day totally across the board? A question well
worth contemplating. I really don’t know, but I know this matter of authority is
absolutely critical and it’s not a new issue. The Hebrew prophets spoke a word
from God, a word that possessed them. Jeremiah stood up on the Temple steps
and said, "The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the
Lord, you repeat this like a chant. You think your safety and security lies here. Let
me tell you, God doesn’t need this institution. God doesn’t need your religious
ritual. Go to Shiloh and see its ruins. See what I did there, and I’ll do it to your
temple, too, because of a lack of authenticity in your religious life."
Jesus was in the line of the prophets, and when he was engaged with the leaders
of the religion of his day, they began to cross-examine him. They were lying in
wait to catch him in everything he said. He cried out against the sterile formalism
of that institutional religion and he became a very threatening voice in the midst
of Jerusalem, coming finally to that last prophetic action when he cleansed the
temple and that triggered the religious authorities to come and say just that, "By
what authority do you do this?" And Jesus said, "Well, tell me about John the
Baptist. What was his authority?" They didn’t dare answer because if they said
from heaven, he would have said, "Why didn’t you follow him? Why didn’t you
believe?" And if they said it’s a human authority, they would have been stoned by
the people because John the Baptist also had a voice that had authenticity that
resonated with people’s experience, that spoke to them where they were and they
believed that he was a prophet of God. If you read through the Gospels, you find
more than one reference where Jesus is spoken of as having the people
spellbound because he spoke as one who had authority and not as the scribes and
the Pharisees.
Of course, it’s not an easy question; it’s not an easy problem, my friend. If you
have an institutional church and you are responsible for the institution, then you
can’t let any crackerjack come rolling through who has a vision. Or, at least, you
have to discern whether or not this voice is a voice that rings with authenticity, or
whether it’s just some fanatic. The question of authority is a critical question.
How do you know?
I submit to you that the problem of authority was dealt with in the only way it can
be dealt with in a healthy fashion by Schleiermacher 200 years ago, whose
authority, he said, rested in his own religious experience. Anything other than
that will tend to sterility and rigidity and will end up killing the prophets.
Schleiermacher is a marvelous figure, one of a small handful of truly great spirits
in 2000 years and, as he spoke to his friends, the cultured despisers of religion,
he laid his heart bare, and he said to them "You’ve rejected something, but what
you have rejected is not the real thing. The real thing is that which makes you
human; the real thing is that which gives depth, dimension to life; the real thing
is that which unifies your experience and creates meaning; the real thing is the
verve and the center and the joy of life. Without religion, you are simply an
animal with reason." And he also believed in preaching; he was a great preacher,
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a loved preacher, and he filled the Church in Berlin. He said to his people, "My
preaching is simply my testimony, and that testimony triggers in others who
desire a like kind of experience, and there is formed a community," and that very
positive sense of his Christian experience and the shared experience of the
community for which he was the preacher was so dynamic and so powerful in his
day, and when at the age of 66 he died of a lung infection, there was weeping
throughout the city; 20,000 to 30,000 people lined the streets as his coffin was
moved through the streets, and they wept from every window and every balcony
because this man had spoken to them, not of some hollow religious experience,
but something that touched them in the depths of their being, enabling them, in a
modern age marked by critical thinking, yet to find experience of that intimate
and mysterious ground of all being, full of grace, which for Schleiermacher and
the Christian church was embodied in Jesus.
Why? Why have we not been able in 200 years to do as he did? Why, out of fear
and reaction, do we trundle back into fundamentalism and absolute claims, when
if we would only trust our experience, we would know the touch of grace of the
living God and live with hope and joy?
References:
Friedrich Schleiermacher. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers, 1797.
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Pentecost XV
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Good News Then and Now
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Jeremiah 7:4, Luke 20:2
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers, 1797.
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Where Do I Stand When the Foundation Gives Way?
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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eng
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 29, 1999 entitled "Where Do I Stand When the Foundation Gives Way?", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7:4, Luke 20:2.
Authority
Critical Thinking
History of Christian Dogma
Modernity
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Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination
From the series: Good News Then and Now
Text: Amos 7:13; Romans 13:1; Matthew 15:18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 15, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I initiated last week a series of messages that will bring us down to October 31, if
we survive. That’s Reformation Sunday, and it is the week prior to the first two
weeks in November, which will be special events here. The West Shore
Committee for Jewish Christian Dialogue will bring Amy-Jill Levine, who will
speak here on Sunday morning. Her theme for the weekend is "When and Why
Did Christianity and Judaism Separate?" Amy-Jill teaches at Vanderbilt Divinity
School, New Testament, although she is a Jewish scholar. Then, John Shelby
Spong, Episcopal Bishop of Newark, will be here the following week to talk about
re-imagining Christian faith and "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Those
two weeks will be the bookends of this series of messages. Amy-Jill will tell us
how it all got started, and Bishop Spong will suggest where it must be going and,
in the meantime, prior to their coming, I hope that I can help you to understand
that change and transformation has been the rule for 2000 years.
Often the Church would like to give the impression that it has a deposit of faith
given once for all, that it is guarded down through the centuries untouched, but
such is not the case. We started last week going back to the Apostolic community
itself, recognizing the expression of that faith in the New Testament documents
that give from beginning to end the impression that the whole of that Jesus
movement was posited on the premise that Jesus would return as the Lord of
glory very soon. The Gospels, the letters of Paul, the Revelation at the end of the
book all give witness to the fact that there was an apocalyptic expectation, that is,
that the heavens would open and that the Son of Man, the Son of God would
appear to judge the living and the dead and bring to consummation all things, the
imminent return of Jesus.
And, of course, it didn’t happen, and it hasn’t happened for 2000 years, and
reflecting back on that, there is a growing awareness and recognition over the last
century or so that it was that disappointed expectation that provided the womb
out of which the whole Church as an institution developed in its organizational
structure, in its liturgical forms, in its creedal formulations. How we are, how we
live, how we believe is the consequence of that disillusion because of the delay of
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the parousia. The fact that Jesus did not return, that imminent expectation was
shattered and, consequently, they found themselves in a world whose history was
going on. They found themselves in a life that they had to learn how to live as
followers of Jesus. It’s all very understandable, all very normal, all very natural.
But, it was a very great crisis, and out of that crisis we have the early emerging
catholic tradition, catholic meaning simply universal, and that tradition in its
early stages was full of conflict and tension, it was all over the board, it was very
chaotic, as you can understand, everyone trying to make sense of that great event
followed by the trauma of disappointment. What in the world is God doing? The
early catholic tradition was the consequence of sorting all that through.
What I want to do this morning, and I can only do it briefly, I have a two-hour
sermon here, but fortunately you only have ten minutes, so I have to give you
huge chunks of stuff and you’ll just have to take my word for it, although I could
read to you all morning here. But I want this morning to suggest to you that, what
appeared to be a very great providence - that this persecuted minority, this band
of followers of Jesus became the established religion of the Roman Empire, and
that establishment brought it great power, position, and prestige, and that which
appeared to be such a blessing, as a matter of fact, was a great seduction which
ended in the wedding of power and religion, so that for nearly 1000 years during
the whole medieval development up to the eve of the Reformation, a Church in
power became a very corrupt institution.
Religious leaders don’t handle power any better than secular leaders. I think it
was the British statesman, Lord Acton, who said, "All power corrupts, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely," and what the Church became in the wake of
that tremendous transformation, was an absolute institution. It was absolute in
the control of salvation. It had the imperial sword to back up its claims and it is a
chapter with dark shadows because the religion of Jesus, the servant, became the
religion of a very dominant, prestigious institutional Church. I can’t possibly
document that for you this morning. Let me simply point to, for example, St.
Augustine, who early on was still looking to the sky for Jesus to return, but then
he lived into the 5th century; he lived long enough to experience the sack of Rome
by the barbarians, the fall of Rome. He wrote the first Christian interpretation of
history called The City of God, and Augustine moved from an expectation of
Jesus to return anytime to an understanding of Church history as being the
millennium for that 1000 years which is referred to in Revelation 20.
Now, I don’t recommend you go home this afternoon and try to understand the
Book of Revelation, nor the 20th chapter, but there’s been a lot of "stuff" that’s
come out of the 20th chapter which would appear to be a thousand years of peace
on earth ruled over by the Messiah who returns. There are some who think he’ll
return and take the Church out of history first. Those are pre-Millennialists. And
there are some who think that he’ll come only at the end of that thousand years,
which was kind of Augustine’s position, so post-Millennialist. The Reformers
didn’t know what in the world to do, so they became a-Millennialists, and of
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course, I’ve tended to become a pan-Millennialist, that is, living with the
confidence that everything will "pan out" in the end. I recommend that.
But, Augustine made a move from expecting Jesus to return to dealing with the
reality of the fact that history was moving, and of course, his idea of that
millennium as the thousand years of Church history created all kinds of
millennial fever as the year 1000 approached. Fully as much, maybe a bit more
than we have today with all the Y2K hysteria. Augustine I point to simply as one
for whom the reality of history, the reality of his human experience, forced him to
adjust his understanding of that biblical story of the return and the reign of Jesus
Christ on earth.
But, what really happened to the Church, and my point this morning, is that it
was brought into a position of domination. I know you’re familiar with the fact
that the Emperor Constantine saw a sign in the sky and he believed it was the
cross, and he heard a voice saying, "By this sign you will conquer," and he won
the battle the next day at the Milvian Bridge in 312, and from that point on he
converted to Christianity, although he wasn’t baptized until near his death; he
was hedging his bets. But, his successors established Christianity as the state
religion and, in so doing, created a powerful institution whose history is not a
nice story.
John Dominic Crossan, who was here in February, in his Jesus, a Revolutionary
Biography, writes,
Finally, about three hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus, ... the
Roman Emperor Constantine, believing that victory over his imperial rival
... near the Milvian Bridge had been obtained by Christ’s power, converted
to Christianity. ...Constantine, wanting a unified Christianity as the
empire’s new religion, ordered the Christian bishops to meet, under
imperial subsidy, in lakeside Nicea...
Obviously, resorts were popular then for conferences, as well. And Constantine
had just one purpose and that was to rule out any theological differences. I
imagine he said to the bishops, "Now, look boys, the accommodations are great,
the food is wonderful, Happy Hour overflowing, I have only one concern - come
out of there with a statement on which you can all agree. Eusebius, a historian of
the times, is quoted by Crossan:
Detachments of the bodyguard and troops surrounded the entrance of the
palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God
proceeded without fear into the innermost of the Imperial apartments, in
which some were the Emperor’s companions at table, while others reclined
on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture
of Christ’s kingdom was thus shadowed forth, and a dream rather than
reality.
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But, Dom Crossan says,
A Christian leader now writes a life of Constantine rather than Jesus. The
meal and the kingdom still come together, but now the participants are the
male bishops alone, and they recline, with the emperor himself, to be
served by others. Dream or reality? Dream or nightmare?
It is, of course, an example of the dialectic just proposed between the historical
Jesus and the confessional Christ, of peasant Jesus grasped now by imperial
faith. Still, as one ponders that progress from open commensality with Jesus to
episcopal banquet with Constantine, is it unfair to regret a progress that
happened so fast and moved so swiftly, that was accepted so readily and criticized
so lightly? Is it time now, or is it already too late, to conduct, religiously and
theologically, ethically and morally, some basic cost accounting with
Constantine?
It was the Constantinian establishment that brought the Church into a
prominence and a dominance which eventuated in a decay and a corruption
which brought about, eventually, a rending again of the body of Christ in the
16th century. The Church became the absolute institute of salvation.
There was total control over the lives of people. Clergy such as Peter and myself
through the authority of the bishops, through the mediation of the pope, who was
the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, would hold you totally in our control. We held
the spigot of grace. We could determine to whom to offer the sacrament, and it
was only with the sacrament received that salvation was possible. Cyprian, the
great bishop and his famous phrase in Latin translated outside the church? No
salvation. It was an absolute institution, infallible and inerrant in all of its
teaching and all its action. It could not be questioned.
Throughout that period there was even a struggle between the throne and the
altar, the princes and the Church. And there was a period in which the Church
dominated the secular powers, as well, until those secular powers eventually
broke free and became dominant. The Church was an absolute institution and it
dominated and it was its death.
The great historian, William Manchester, in his book, A World Lit Only By Fire,
describes the eventuation of that Constantinian establishment and that
absolutizing of the institutional form of religion in the Church at the eve of the
Reformation. He writes,
... The center of the Ptolemaic universe [still the universe where the earth
is the center of everything] was the known world - Europe, with the Holy
Land and North Africa on the fringes. The sun moved round it every day.
Heaven was above the immovable earth, somewhere in the overarching
sky; hell seethed far beneath their feet. Kings rules at the pleasure of the
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion and Power
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Almighty; all others did what they were told to do. Jesus, the son of God,
had been crucified and resurrected, and his reappearance was imminent,
or at any rate inevitable. Every human being adored him (the Jews and the
Muslims being invisible). During the 1,436 years since the death of Saint
Peter the apostle, 211 popes had succeeded him, all chosen by God and all
infallible. The Church was indivisible, the afterlife a certainty; all
knowledge was already known. And nothing would ever change. The
mighty storm was swiftly approaching, but Europeans were not only
unaware of it; they were convinced that such a phenomenon could not
exist. Shackled in ignorance, disciplined by fear, and sheathed in
superstition...
That, my friends, was the state of the Church and the abuses that I cannot begin
to recount here, are legion because the religious institution with human
leadership had power. That, of course, was a total betrayal of the biblical faith. It
was already in Paul’s day a question of how to live in accommodation with the
secular power, the governing power. Romans 13 talks about that. And in the
Gospel of Matthew we have already Matthew writing some 50 years after Jesus
this little scene at Caesarea Philippi where Peter has the keys of the kingdom
given to him, the preeminence of Peter. This was already the dealing of the
authority question within that early Jesus movement. So, we’re dealing with
things here that are part and parcel of anything human.
But, Jesus, after he gives the keys of the kingdom to Peter and would seem to put
such authority in his hands, follows that by saying "If anyone would follow me, he
must take up his cross. If anyone would hold onto his life, he must lose it. If
anybody would lose his life for my sake, he will find it." And when it finally came
down, when the rubber hit the road, Jesus had a banquet quite in contrast to the
one at Nicea in which he took bread and broke it and said, "This is my body," and
he took wine and poured it out and said, "This is my blood," because Jesus was in
the tradition of the Hebrew prophets who spoke truth to power and refused to be
co-opted by power.
Amos was just a farmer, he came to the royal palaces one day and began to
preach and he said God is letting down a plumb line to measure the integrity of
this kingdom, and that began to scare the counselors to the king, and so they
called Amaziah, who was a hired lackey (a good king always hired a priest), and
the priest came out and he said, "Hey, you farmer Amos, what are you doing
here?" And Amos said, "The word of the Lord came to me," and the priest said,
"We don’t need the word of the Lord in the royal palace. Go back and preach to
your sycamore trees and never come here again."
When you preach truth to power, you end up in the possibility of being crucified,
but then you are only following the way of the one who even this morning says to
us, in an open table, "This is my body; this is my blood," for the way of the Gospel
is not the way of domination, control, and abuse, but is the way of grace, of
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion and Power
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
compassion, offering the accessibility of God to all who are hungry and all who
are thirsty. This is not the table of this congregation. This is not Peter’s table nor
mine, nor these elders. This is the table of our Lord who invited those who would
stand in solidarity with him to take bread and cup and go forth strengthened, not
to dominate, but to die that the world might live.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/97f2cc0d348566bec0d848b170d9ed4c.mp3
001e11e8ce2bcd6a5618c2e8fa656bca
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XIII
Series
Good News Then and Now
Scripture Text
Amos 7:13, Romans 13:1, Matthew 15:18
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19990815
Date
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1999-08-15
Title
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Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 15, 1999 entitled "Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Amos 7:13, Romans 13:1, Matthew 15:18.
Authority
History of Church
truth to power
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1d4f143520a043be029200762d159c5f.pdf
e095ab928f4350f93a4ac915ca0f254d
PDF Text
Text
The Church Must Die or Die
From the series: Moving On To Maturity
Text: Ezekiel 37:14; John 12:24, 43; 13:5
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 1, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
On Thursday, the Grand Haven Tribune called my secretary, Jane, and asked if
she had made a mistake in the newspaper ad. Jane asked, "Why?", and they said,
"Well, the sermon title is listed as, ‘The Church Must Die or Die,’" and Jane said,
"No, unfortunately, that’s what he means."
I think, upon a little reflection, you might understand what I mean. The Church
must die to itself, its institutional forms, its prestige, its power, its selfaggrandizing tendency - must die to all of that, or it will die because it will fail to
fulfill the purpose that God has for the Church.
The death and resurrection image is a very common New Testament image. Paul
says, "I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live." In the 6th chapter of
Romans, he talks about being buried with Christ in baptism in order that he
might be raised again to newness of life. Dying to self, rising to new life in the
Spirit of God is a very central image, the idea that we do come to the end of our
self, our self project, our self-centeredness, dying to that, we become open to that
which would open us to the eternal, to God, to the sacred, to the Holy.
While I know that the references in the New Testament are personal references, I
don’t think I’m stretching it too far to apply that to the community, the body of
Christ, in our case, to the Church. It is true, just as an individual has to come to
the end of self in order to be filled with that which is beyond, so the Church needs
not just once, but again and again, to die to its forms and its structures and its
formulations and rules and regulations and modus operandi in order that it
might experience the freshness and newness that the Spirit would continue to
create. I want to say that this morning. I was intending to deal with that in the
fourth of my presentations on Tuesday night about "How My Mind Has
Changed," but I never got to that one, so I’m going to take it up this morning,
nonetheless, because I do believe it is so critical to our experience, our experience
of being Christian, our religious life, our spiritual life. It is so important that we
understand that our diverse religious experience and expression is the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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consequence of the fact that it is a human response, that religion is a human
phenomenon.
My mind has changed about that because I grew up, was nurtured and trained
and began my ministry thinking quite differently about religion. In the first place,
I thought there was only one true religion and I had it. But, more than that, I
thought religion was dictated from God, that it was divinely arranged, and that it
was incumbent upon us to determine, to discern that which was true and absolute
because religion was the product of divine revelation, rather than recognizing
that the vast diversity of human religion is the consequence of the fact that
religion is human response to that initiative from beyond, that sense of the holy
or the sacred. It is our human response to the encounter with God in the mystery
of our existence. Those questions that obtrude themselves upon us, particularly at
those critical moments of life, draw from us questions and lead us on a quest, a
quest for that ultimate mystery that defies our attempts to neatly package and
domesticate it. Human religion is response to the Ultimate Mystery, and the
diversity of religious forms and shapes and creeds and practices reflect the
diversity of humankind and the diversity of human experience, and it is not as
though my response is right and true and yours somewhat questionable, but
rather, that being different people with different experiences, we respond out of
the depths of our being with a wonderful diversity that marks human religion.
That makes a huge difference in how we understand the pursuit of our own
spiritual life and how we relate to others individually and institutionally. The
institutional Church is a necessity. No movement of the Spirit can ever
perpetuate itself without institutional forms. But, the very moment that the
institutional forms take shape, the seeds of death lie in the movement of the
Spirit. That’s just the way it is. I don’t know how it could be any different than
that. But, at least the awareness of that can alert us to the danger of absolutizing
the respective religious forms which cover the face of the earth.
The Church hasn’t taught us that, by and large, for we have claimed divinely
grounded revelation and divinely shaped institutional forms, creedal forms,
liturgical forms, the way the Church is organized and structured. And the Church
has taught us that kind of absolutizing. It was in July of 1049 or so that the
delegates from the Pope in Rome went to Constantinople and stood before the
altar at St. Sophia and excommunicated the Patriarch who was the head of the
Eastern Orthodox wing of the Church. Within a few days, the Patriarch in
Constantinople returned the favor, and we had the first major schism within the
Church. Then it was the western Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic, the Latin
right and the Eastern Orthodox right. And then, of course, in the 16th century the
catalyst, Martin Luther, but other reformers besides, led that movement that we
call the Reformation of the Church and once again we could get language many
places about how they mutually excommunicated each other. With the advent of
Protestantism out of the 16th century, the Church continued to splinter and it
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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splinters still, and I do believe that the problem is that we fail to recognize the
human dimension of our religious experience.
I know there is something endemic in all of us that really wants to have the truth,
the last word, absolute security. There is something human in us that wants our
way, our truth, our institution, our society to be infallible and inerrant and
absolutely trustworthy. As a matter of fact, in the human scene, that doesn’t
happen. And, as a matter of fact, if we demand that that happens or have the
illusion that ours is "it," we’ll be in a situation of constant conflict and mutual
excommunication, and the whole scene will be what it has been over nearly 2000
years. Church history is not a pretty story, and I really think at the core is that
inclination to absolutize my vision, my view, my form, justifying it on the basis
that it is divine rather than simply recognizing that there is this tremendous
diversity of religious expression which points to the universality of the religious
quest, the question deep within, and all of that diversity reflecting the diversity of
humankind and human experience that forms that response in all of the
respective ways that we find. I think it’s a very crucial insight to see that our
religious expression is a human, creative, imaginative construct. It is not sacred,
it is not holy, it is not inerrant or infallible, and it didn’t come from God. It is
because God has come to us, but the varieties of religious experience are reflected
in the varieties of religious institutions, forms, and structures, and if we could
just get there, religion could become a part of the world’s solutions rather than
the volatile fuel to continue to be part of the world’s problems.
This, I think, is what was going on with Jesus. That’s why I read these selected
passages. His movement creates a stir. There’s life; there’s passion; the people
hear him gladly; his words resonate with something deep within them, and in
that climactic sign that makes them call a Council, they say, "What are we going
to do?" and Caiaphas, spokesperson for the established Church, with a bit of
cynicism which is peril for those of us who are in this thing professionally, says,
"Look, don’t be silly. With one man gone, everything stays intact. Simple." Let me
say a word for Caiaphas. There are authorities, leaders within the institution,
necessarily so, and there are concerns for the well-being of the institution, for its
faithful perpetuation and its fruitful life. But, the danger is, and we can see it
here, that that fresh voice will be stifled and that movement be killed.
Jesus comes into the city, they hail him, and the cry is, "Look, we can’t do
anything. The whole world’s going after him." The Greeks want to see him and
that triggers with Jesus the realization of where he is on the calendar of his life.
The hour has come, and now it’s his struggle. Will I be true? Will I be true to that
newness that I see and embody? Or, will I buckle and allow the old to go on
undisturbed? A grain of wheat falls in the ground and dies, yet bears fruit. The
one who grasps unto his life loses it. The one willing to give his life away gains life
eternal, life in a whole other dimension. And John sums up the end of that first
half of the Gospel by saying, "In spite of everything they saw, they didn’t listen."
Even some of the leaders knew it. Even some of the leaders believed. But, for fear
© Grand Valley State University
�Church Must Die or Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
of being put out of the synagogue, loving human glory more than the glory of
God, they didn’t join the movement and Jesus was executed. It is a paradigm, a
picture, a model of what has happened over and over again. Because we identify
our forms, our structures, no matter how loved they may be, no matter how
precious they may be, we tend to make them gods which we just happen to
possess rather than our poor stumbling, stammering attempts to respond to the
one who has encountered us.
In a recent issue of Christianity Today, the conservative journal, there were some
130 signatures to a declaration of doctrinal definition straight out of the 16th
century, the evangelical, fundamentalist group who signed that document
declaring once again what has been declared right down the line. And in the
journal of more liberal Christianity, the editorial in The Christian Century, after
discussing that declaration from the fundamental group, says the believers with
such questions about the atonement or about evangelical landmarks such as the
infallibility of scripture and the lost state of non-Christians will not find their
questions addressed or acknowledged by the document, either on biblical or
theological grounds. They will only find the old claims reasserted. Such a
summary of doctrinal claims can be a rather empty gesture, if not accompanied
by a deep engagement with the real questions that are on people’s minds.
I find it very interesting that, in a time when certainly the Church is in great
difficulty there is this retreat, this attempt to define, to dot the i and cross the t,
and all they can do is assert it, and there is no engagement with our
contemporary situation or the questions that are in the minds and hearts of
people because they are people, not because they are Christian or not or
evangelical or conservative or liberal. And, of course, the mainline
denominations, likewise, are struggling with some critical issues that threaten to
tear apart two or three or four of them and again I think it is because we’re all
knotted up in this problem of authority. If what we have always been is divinely
sanctioned, then I’ll fight for it. But, if we could just come to look at one another
in the eye and understand the authenticity and the passion of one another’s
hearts and believe one another and recognize that, out of diverse human
experience and diverse kinds of people, these diverse responses are made, if we
could live together under the canopy of love, it seems like it would be so simple.
Ezekiel’s wonderful vision - Israel is in tough shape. They said our bones are
dried up; we’re dead. And the voice of the Lord comes to the prophet, "Can these
bones live? O, Lord God, You know." Then there was the coming together of the
bones and the sinews and the muscles and they were a standing army, but they
were still dead until the Spirit of God, the breath of God, blew and brought them
alive, and the promises, "O, House of Israel, you shall live by my spirit," says the
Lord.
I concluded the Gospel readings with those five verses from chapter 13 of John’s
Gospel as the passion story opens with Jesus at supper with his disciples, taking a
© Grand Valley State University
�Church Must Die or Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
basin of water and a towel and washing their feet, because I think there’s a
picture, a symbol, a model of authenticity that is not based on any authoritarian
claims. It won’t work anymore simply to quote a verse, recite a creed, or call the
Church to witness. The authenticity will be demonstrated or the Church will die.
The Church must die to its absolutizing, to its divisions that point to human
diversity that are claimed the consequence of divine revelation. The Church must
die to its vested interests, its power structures, and it must allow the Spirit of God
to blow through it, take a basin and a towel and wash the world’s feet, feed the
hungry, clothe the naked, be a community of compassion, of passion, of love, and
it will not need absolute claims, it will not need an infallible Bible, it will not need
some creed that can never again be touched. It could live! It could be real, it
would be powerful, and the jaw of the world would drop and say, "My God,
behold how they love one another and all God’s world." It’s as simple as that.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/43865dc48d6c2eddfbf735e1aaa6a084.mp3
fdf14723498f3354fc9e539a6c8ec7e3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XI
Series
Moving On To Maturity
Scripture Text
Ezekiel 37:14, John 12:24, 43, 13:5
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19990801
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1999-08-01
Title
A name given to the resource
The Church Must Die or Die
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 1, 1999 entitled "The Church Must Die or Die ", as part of the series "Moving On To Maturity", on the occasion of Pentecost XI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ezekiel 37:14, John 12:24, 43, 13:5.
Authority
Compassion
Spirit
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f742aa537b078780033ef7e13a086539.pdf
d81960265235f52ac041368b5da95c17
PDF Text
Text
Journey With Us Toward New Horizons
Text: Genesis 12:1; Hebrews 11:8, 10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 13, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
This is always a wonderful Sunday for us. There is a vibrancy in the air and
electricity; there is anticipation, and so we have a moment again of new
beginnings - new beginnings for the church year, for the educational year, for a
new intentionality and seriousness in making this place a place of deep reflection,
a place of education, study, taking faith seriously and trying to create a whole
congregation of theologians. The invitation this year is COME, JOURNEY WITH
US - Toward New Horizons. The image is that of the journey, which is a biblical
image, very common biblical image of the life of faith, the pilgrimage of faith.
And, Toward New Horizons - it is always so for the people of God, always called,
as was Abraham, to go into the future, claiming the future by faith, with
confidence, because of the one who calls us.
Today I want to think with you about thinking the faith, about the serious
wrestling with the Christian tradition, so that it is more than a matter of rote,
recitation, and simple perfunctory, habitual action, but that it is that which arises
out of the center of our being and is pursued with dedication and commitment,
with seriousness. Next week Peter will talk to you about another aspect of that
journey, which is the whole matter of spiritual formation, for it is not enough to
think the faith. There is a hunger within all of us for the experience of God, the
experience of faith. On the third week, Bob will call you to compassionate action,
because the faith that we think and the God that we experience is not simply a
luxury to be enjoyed in splendid isolation, but is that which shapes us and forms
us to be instruments of God for the carrying out of God’s purpose of compassion
and justice and love in this world. So, it is a time of new beginning. At Christ
Community, we are on a journey. It has ever been so. But, it is so in a new,
serious manner as we speak, because we have a new charter of freedom and a
great opportunity to find that translation of the Christian tradition that finds
resonance with our contemporary experience. That is what we are trying to do.
As Gary Eberle, in his book, The Geography of Nowhere, has said, "The old maps
don’t work anymore. The early cartography you’ve seen in books, the shape of a
world as it was conceived, those maps were wrong. They were based on an
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
inadequate understanding of the physical universe. But the mapmakers did, in
the forming of those maps, have a sense of orientation, and those maps did help
people to have an understanding of where they were in the world. We know today
that those old maps are archaic. They’re simply wrong. And today we have this
global positioning system where you can be steaming in a boat in the middle of
Lake Michigan and turn that on and from a satellite it will point out exactly where
you are. In such a day, in such an age where we can pinpoint our location on the
planet, we recognize that there are many of us who don’t really know where we
are. Because the old institutions have crumbled, and the old authority structures
have been called into question.
Just to create a little envy in those of you who aren’t going with us to Geneva this
afternoon, where we’ll spend a few days with the ghost of John Calvin over our
shoulder, and then, if you really want to get jealous, I would tell you that we’re
going down to Provence in the south of France, to lollygag on the Riviera. But, on
the way down, we’ll stop at Avignon and, in order to prepare a little bit for that
for the people going with us, I was reading again of that old church history and
was reminded that it was in the 1300s that the papacy moved out of Rome and
moved to the south of France, Avignon, and one of the old wonders that we’ll visit
and tour in another week is the Palace of the Popes, and it’s a very splendid place,
I understand. I have not seen it. But, the Palace of the Popes in Avignon was a
sign of the wealth of the papacy in the 1300s. This was the age of the domination
of the church and the papal structure found ways to tax and charge fees and to
gain money by hook or by crook, so that the income of one of those popes in those
60 or 70 years in which the papacy was in Avignon was better than three times
that of the king of France. (I’d always thought I’d wanted to be a Cardinal, but I
think I might as well go all the way and try to be a pope). My point in bringing
this up is that, in this time, the Pope was the most powerful person on earth. He
was a religious figure and the church dominated the continent of Europe, and the
kings groveled before the papal authority because the papal authority had the
keys of the kingdom. The papal authority could excommunicate a person and
shut them out of heaven. Or, on the other hand, open the gates of paradise.
Think of it. That was the world. The king groveled before the Pope because he
believed that the church was a divine institution on this earth that literally
controlled the gates of the kingdom. Now, if you have that kind of power, you can
do anything you want to, and you can control the masses, let alone the monarchs
of the earth. That was the world; that was what was believed. The kings groveled
before the religious authority, and it works if you believe it. And, if you believe it
and you have a dominating religious figure, you can control society, you can
manage people, you can manage morality, for example. They say that Moscow
was a very moral place during the heyday of the Communist regime. Dictators,
potentates, totalitarian powers can control people, and there are those who
believe that people need to be controlled. There, in Avignon, is a palace to witness
to the power and the authority of the religious authority that dominated the
world.
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
But also in Geneva is the memorial to the Reformation in which that institution
that had grown corrupt and fat began to crumble before the waves of reform. But,
even the Reformation would still, on the basis of authority, make the Bible the
authoritarian power that the Pope was in the Catholic communion. John Calvin
did everything he could with the elders of Geneva to control the morality of
Geneva. Authoritarian power and domination.
Well, is it any wonder that once that institutional form began to shatter that the
human spirit eventually emerged to a point where it threw off all kinds of
authoritarian hold? Isn’t it humanly understandable, isn’t it perfectly obvious,
human beings being who human beings are, that, where there is a crack or a
fissure in the structure and the daylight comes through, it will go like this? And so
we have the Age of Reason and we have the ascendency of the human intellect
and the honoring of human rationality to a fault, as we know in our postmodern
age, where we have come to recognize that the rational depiction of reality is only
a model and a fiction, as a matter of fact, and the human mind and human
rationality cannot get itself around the mystery that is life, the ultimate mystery.
Nonetheless, we are the products of that move to the modern and we are people
who take for granted that non-authoritarian way of living. Modern society will no
longer tolerate a church or a book or a tradition that shuts down its mind and
simply calls it blindly to follow through the labyrinths of life.
Robert Bellah, one of the most acute observers of society, a sociologist in this
country, in an essay about religious evolution, cited Tom Paine, at the Age of
Reason, who said, "My mind is the church," and Thomas Jefferson who said, "I
am a sect." Then Robert Bellah went on to say that the modern period has come
to accept the fact that people will join themselves voluntarily to institutions.
There is no compulsion for you to be here, to be a member of this institution, and
one of the marks of the church in our day is that its voluntary nature is
recognized. There is no longer that coercion. If you live in this block, you are not
automatically a member of this parish, and therefore coerced to be a part of its
institution. Robert Bellah says that private, voluntary, religious association in the
west achieved full legitimation for the first time in the early modern situation.
But then he goes on to say, in the full flowering of modernity, will there be
another kind of institutional structure that will be able to encompass the
freedom, even the autonomy of the human person? Will we find some kind of
institutional forms that will be supportive and helpful and give guidance and
direction, but apart from the kind of authoritarian control that was imposed from
the outside? He says, rather than interpreting these trends, this fragmentation in
society where we go our own way and start our own clubs and our own
denominations and our own congregations - rather than interpreting these terms
as significant of indifference, of secularization, I see in them the increasing
acceptance of the notion that individuals must work out their own ultimate
solutions and that the most the church can do is provide a favorable environment
for doing so without imposing on them a prefabricated set of answers.
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Bellah says in the modern situation, the contemporary situation, it is the task of
the church to create here an arena, an ambience for the pursuit of the religious
quest, for the asking of the questions, for the struggle and the wrestling with the
issues of life, but no longer will it be tolerated that we impose upon you a
prefabricated structure of belief. That’s the way it was. That’s the way
traditionally it has been, and it will not work anymore, and we are simply at that
cutting age where we have accepted that fact, we celebrate that fact, and we invite
you to journey with us into a future that is unknown and uncharted, because that
is the very nature of the human pilgrimage of faith. Bellah says it remains to be
seen whether the freedom modern society implies at the cultural and personal, as
well as the social level, can be stably institutionalized in large-scale societies. Yet,
the very situation that has been characterized as one of the collapse of meaning
and the failure of moral standards can also, and I would argue, more fruitfully, be
viewed as one offering unprecedented opportunities for creative innovation in
every sphere of human action.
Now, that’s the very same note that was sounded earlier when I read that excerpt
from Gary Eberle. Will there be, out in the future, some reconfiguration of the
institutional life of the human family that will be able to embrace our questions
and our quest? Who knows? But, one thing we know - you cannot go back to
yesterday. To go back to yesterday, you might as well go back to Avignon. You
might try to re-invent a world where the Pope can subdue the king or the
President. But it won’t work. And I don’t want to go back to such a world. I want
to be able to think. I want my own belief and my own faith to rise out of the
center of my own being; I want to believe what I believe. I want to be able to think
about it so that what I believe is what I really think, so that I really believe it, so
that it’s a reflection of the authenticity of my humanness. No one is going to put it
on me. Not an institution, not a book, not a tradition. I’ll use the institution for
every value it has; I’ll value this book and study it and mine its treasures; I’ll
respect that tradition and gain all of its wisdom, all the wisdom I can from it. But,
it will finally be my journey, my pilgrimage, my faith, my insight, because it’s my
life! And I invite you to journey with me, and to think about it, so that it is a
thought-full journey of faith.
I’m afraid that in many churches today, the situation in our country will be
berated and the President will be berated and all of that despair will be
everywhere. Well, that’s the very time for the people of God, recognizing our total
vulnerability, all of us, recognizing the weakness in the heart and center of all of
us, recognizing that the decay and the distortion that is present everywhere is not
the consequence of some fall from perfection, but is simply the clinging of the
slime and the mud from which we’re emerging.
I believe in the future! Because I believe in God! I believe in the human family
because I believe the Spirit of God is nudging us, beckoning us ever onward. I
believe in a world of the future marked by justice and by grace and by compassion
because that’s in this book. This book tells me that the image is the journey. We
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
are on the way. Abraham was called to go out, not knowing where he was going to
go. He was 75 years old and married to a barren woman. When God would start a
new beginning out of the chaos of Genesis, of the garden scene, of the flood scene,
of the Babel scene - when God would start a new beginning, when God would
form a people, he starts with human impossibility; he starts with an old man and
a barren womb in order to create newness. And the writer to the Hebrews was
writing to an early church in the wake of Jesus. People who were followers of
Jesus, but who were getting weak knees, who looked about them and were
becoming dismayed, who didn’t know if they could hold on anymore, and he said,
"Hold on. Be strong. Faith is the conviction of things not seen, it is the evidence
of things hoped for." Look at old Abraham. Look at Sarah. They went out; they
didn’t know where they were going, but they simply heard the voice of God and
they followed to be the people of God.
To be a biblical people is to be a people not settled, not fixed, not set in concrete.
It is to be a people who are on pilgrimage, who don’t know what the future holds,
who are willing to take all the tradition and all the wisdom of the book and all of
the institutional forms and use them for all they’re worth, but to submit to none
of them, not to submit one’s mind and one’s heart. It is to be a person who
believes, who thinks and who goes, confident, because God is God.
That’s where we’re going, by God. Then, don’t despair. Don’t let your tail drag.
Stiffen the weak knees. Let there be a glint in your eye. Believe in the future;
believe in possibilities; believe and know, as Bob offered in his prayer, that we
create our future because we recognize that we don’t stand here as puppets on a
string, but as responsible human beings who are called to journey and faith
toward new horizons with confidence and joy.
References:
Robert Bellah, “Religion in Human Evolution,” American Sociological Review,
1964.
Gary Eberle. The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern
World. Sheed and Ward, 1995.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6b9904f980350aae45c887eb22ca4d2f.mp3
50fc5e996b23d211fb70cbb1f8fde47f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XV
Scripture Text
Genesis 12:1, Hebrews 11,8,10
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Robert Bellah, "Religion in Human Evolution," American Sociological Review, 1964
Gary Eberle. The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern World, 1995.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19980913
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-09-13
Title
A name given to the resource
Journey With Us Toward New Horizons
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 13, 1998 entitled "Journey With Us Toward New Horizons", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 12:1, Hebrews 11,8,10.
Authority
History of Church
Journey of Faith
Modernity
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ef15f719614c57aae3ddfffe196e7a17.pdf
6afd88b5d8505c24ee27a7b109a4c5c1
PDF Text
Text
The Holy Catholic Church
From the series: I Do Believe
Text: Mark 11:28; Ephesians 4:4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
May 19, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Today we celebrated the sacrament of Baptism in the name of the Triune God:
The Father - God as ground and source of all that is;
Jesus Christ - the human face of God in which we have seen love and grace;
The Spirit - the operative presence of the Living God here and now, with us.
Baptized in the name of the Living God - signed by water as belonging to the
people of God, the community of the Covenant of Grace.
There is no mention of the Reformed Church in America, no mention of Christ
Community Church. No, Baptism is the sacrament of belonging to the People of
God, not an institution nor any organizational arrangement of those people.
Baptized in the name of the Living God - not in the name of the servant of Word
and sacrament - not in my name. The Church is not a personality cult. The
celebrant is but a servant of God, of God's Word of grace, of the signs and seals of
grace.
This morning's baptisms give me occasion to say that but, had there been no
sacrament this morning, I would have made this point in any case, because today
this congregation will gather, not only in this setting of worship, but also, later, in
its organizational form as a congregation. And this is as critical a moment as this
congregation has faced in its 126 years, for it will have to decide who it is and
what it will be.
On the threshold of that decision, I want to be very clear: what is at stake is our
sense of what shape God's grace takes in this world. What is at stake is our
understanding of the Gospel of God's grace, the interpretation of the scriptures
and the translation of the Gospel in our historical context so that it makes a
connection between the revelation of God and present human experience.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Catholic Church
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
At issue is our understanding of how our present human situation is addressed by
the Word of the Living God. In making that point, I am challenging two possible
bases for how you might decide to cast your vote First of all, you ought not to vote No because you attribute too much importance
to the Reformed Church in America, as though the RCA is synonymous with the
Holy Catholic Church. The RCA is an organization, a human structure. To say
that is not to denigrate the RCA; it is simply to recognize that denominations are
human organizational structures and, to be honest, they are more a witness to the
sinfulness of the Church than to the spirituality of the Church. Most of them have
ethnic roots or they have arisen out of doctrinal conflict. The proliferation that
resulted from the rending of the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century has
been a tragic witness to human cussedness. Yet, the Spirit works in and through
them nonetheless.
There are affectional family ties and long-time relationships that draw one. I
recognize that and I do not belittle that. But, acknowledging that, I must say that
what is at stake today transcends those human, positive, emotional bonds.
Secondly, you ought not to vote Yes simply to support me, your pastor. The
Church of Jesus Christ is not a personality cult. You must not vote on the basis of
a human leader.
Let me be clear; the literally hundreds of letters, cards, and phone calls, your
personal words of love and support, have moved me greatly and touched me
deeply. Without that strong sense of your affection and affirmation I do not know
how I could have gotten through these past months.
Your decision today, however, must not be to follow a human leader. Your
decision must be based on your understanding of the grace of God and the
concrete form of that grace in human community.
In the negotiation meetings between the Classis of Muskegon and our negotiating
team, there was, I believe, a defining moment. I was not present; I have not been
a part of that process; it is not my place. But I was told that, at the second
meeting, one of our people made a statement that put the issue in its true
perspective. The person was John Van Eenenaam. John and Marianne and family
have been with us for twenty-five years. Before that, they were in Reformed
congregations - in fact, their baptisms occurred in these respective Reformed
congregations. And John's name - is there a more difficult Dutch name to master,
either in its spelling or its pronunciation? Further, John stems from Zeeland!
Those are true Dutch Reformed roots, or should I say, bulbs!
John said to the Classis people, "If something happened to Dick Rhem, we would
look for someone to replace him who is like him, who would lead us into the
realization of our Mission Statement."
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Catholic Church
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
When I heard that, my heart leaped. That made it clear to all who had ears to
hear that what is at issue here is not Dick Rhem. Rather, what is at issue is that
message that I have proclaimed and the incarnation of that message in this
concrete community.
Not the Reformed Church as an organization; not Dick Rhem as a human leader;
rather, the message that has shaped us and formed us as the community that we
are.
Having said that, I do not deny that Spirit needs form and the Church will always
take on some concrete form. And the Spirit does call, anoint, and equip human
leaders. The organized churches and the human leaders - that is all we have,
warts and all. But, we must never confuse a form of organization nor a human
leader with the thing in itself - the Holy Catholic Church which is the People of
God living in covenant with the God of all mercy.
I do believe the Holy Catholic Church. That is, that God's Spirit gathers a
community of persons who experience God's grace revealed in Jesus Christ. In all
of its ups and downs, its finest moments and its terrible betrayals, there is an
ongoing community of people indwelt by God's Spirit, forgiven by God's grace
and called to worship and to witness to the God Who is Creator of all and Lover of
all, Whose Spirit is moving all things toward the consummation of God's eternal
purposes.
In the history of that people there have been critical junctures. Certainly we
believe such was the case when the Word became flesh. In the traditional role of
prophet, Jesus called the People of God to be faithful to their own tradition. That
meant radical revision, repentance and renewal and that does not happen
without sharp resistance.
In Mark's Gospel, Jesus comes but once to Jerusalem. He will take his message of
the Kingdom to the religious center of the nation, there to challenge the religious
authorities with his call to renewal. His radical action in the temple, driving out
the moneychangers as our text has it, was a symbolic prophetic action that called
in question the whole Temple system which Marcus Borg describes as "The
politics of holiness" in contrast to that quite different understanding of Jesus
which Borg calls "The politics of compassion."
I read this Gospel lesson, however, not to reflect on the meaning of Jesus' action,
but rather to show how such prophetic action raises the question of authority.
And they said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave
you this authority to do them?’ (Mark 11:28)
Here we meet the same two factors to which I referred earlier - the organizational
structure and the human leaders.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Catholic Church
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
The organizational structure is the form the Spirit takes in concrete human
society - political structures, economic structures, religious structures.
Over and over again in the respective arenas of human culture, movements are
born and gather momentum and experience dynamic growth. Then they level off;
they seek a form by which the movement's insights or policy or beliefs can be
perpetuated and regularized. Usually the movement begins with the vision of a
person or small group but, once the vision becomes institutionalized, caretakers
take over - guardians of the system.
And then the originating vision is lost in the routine of the system and the
caretakers try to find ways to keep the institution going and even try to convince
themselves and the people that there is still fire burning somewhere.
Enter the prophetic voice uncovering the hollowness of the institutional forms
and calling for re-visioning and renewal. But that is threatening to the caretakers;
they have a vested interest in maintaining the forms and structures in place. And
so, they take on the visionary.
The question is quite in order - By what authority?
And that is where the battle rages again and again in all dimensions of human
society: the organizational personnel charged to keep the institution alive and
growing and the prophetic visionary who sees the tradition has hardened and lost
its connection to human experience as that continues to develop, and calls for
revision and renewal.
The organizational people have a responsibility to preserve and perpetuate
institutional forms; the prophetic visionary loves that which the forms were
created to embody and pass along - the original fire, the burning truth which gets
domesticated and calcified with the movement of time, and thus he challenges
the forms in order to set free the Spirit.
The Temple authorities ask, "Who gives you authority to do these things?"
It is the classic clash of institutional form and visionary prophetic challenge and
the question is: By what authority?
Jesus responded by putting a question to his interrogators:
"John's baptism; was it from God or of human origin?"
You see, Jesus was not the first to be challenged for making a prophetic protest.
John the Baptist had preached fire and judgment on the banks of the Jordan and
Jerusalem had streamed out to hear him. There was a Baptist movement parallel
to Jesus' early movement. So, Jesus put the question of authority back in the lap
of the religious leaders because the question was the same, but it took the focus
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Catholic Church
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
off Jesus and put it on John and that created a quandary for the Temple
authorities because, if they said John's message was from God, Jesus would ask,
"Why then did you not believe his message?," but if they said John's message was
of human origin, they feared the people because the people had felt the power of
God in John's prophetic preaching.
Human society in all aspects of its culture must again and again decide between
the established structure and organization and the prophetic voice challenging
and calling to new vision. It is seldom simple, never black and white. But the
human story is one of Spirit finding form, form conveying Spirit, form growing
rigid, imprisoning Spirit and Spirit breaking the form to find new freedom - in
the arena of politics, of education, of religion. And the people have to choose - the
organizational form or the new vision created by a human leader.
The choice should not be made because one absolutizes an institution, nor
because one idolizes a person. I do believe the Holy Catholic Church. I do not
believe in the Church; I believe the Church - that is, that reality of a gathered
people of God called by the Spirit, embraced by grace to worship and to serve the
Living God.
Over the centuries it has had many forms and experienced many prophetic
challenges. It has been terribly corrupt and marvelously renewed. And the people
must choose - they ask, "By what authority?"
The answer lies in another question - Is this of God, or of human origin?
Let me put the question to the Muskegon Classis - Is God's grace evident here in
the lives of people transformed, of people touched by grace, healed and
experiencing new life? Is there evidence here of worship full of wonder, of
devotion to God expressed through commitment to people and compassionate
care one of another? Are children nurtured in God's love and youth challenged to
follow the way of Jesus?
If the answer is Yes, then is this of God or of human origin? If of God, then, I ask,
why are we being troubled?
If the answer is of human origin, then they must answer to you - as fine and
beautiful a community of people as one is likely to find anywhere.
I rest my case with you, my people. If what I see in you is not an authentic
expression of God's grace effecting human transformation, then I've got it all
wrong. But if an honest examination of this community does bear out that this is
a community of God's people, then I have nothing more to say.
They ask me, "By what authority?" or "Is your theology right?", or however the
question is phrased.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Catholic Church
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
I respond, "Is this Christ Community of God or of human origin? You tell me."
I believe the Holy Catholic Church - not in, rather, I believe the Church; I believe
God will have as God has had, a people, transformed by Grace, constituting a
concrete community of compassion.
Always, at all times, in all places. I do believe that. I do believe the Church is here
in this place. I believe the Church here is and will be:
catholic - that is, really one, universal;
evangelical - that is, a community of Good News, of Grace;
reformed - that is, being always in process, always reforming.
I do believe - the Holy Catholic Church, and I believe it comes to concrete
expression here. We are the Church!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d3435d1e8e6e2d6c4ccf1d4487e86de7.mp3
f7c55143d4c5cc6b69c015d4ab1ea058
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
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Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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1981-2014
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Eastertide VII
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I Do Believe
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Mark 11:28, Ephesians 4:4
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19960519
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1996-05-19
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The Holy Catholic Church
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 19, 1996 entitled "The Holy Catholic Church", as part of the series "I Do Believe", on the occasion of Eastertide VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 11:28, Ephesians 4:4.
Authority
Community of Faith
Grace of God
Nature of God
Prophetic Voice
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c46aba8fa9763f10a6f1bc023ce08666.pdf
0a1a0fbe85a5115e186f2d5a1c04e5c7
PDF Text
Text
Regarding the Conflict About Christian Exclusivity
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Edited Transcript of the Spoken Address followed by Questions and Answers at
The Synod of the Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America
Ramapo, New Jersey
October 4, 1996
Editor’s Note: See “The Church in Conflict – Can Non-Believers Be Saved?” for
the prepared text of the address.
Thank you for the opportunity of being with you today (I think). I want to begin
by saying that I am not here on a crusade. I am here because I was invited to
come and, having taken the stand I have, I feel there is some responsibility to give
an account of myself.
I have all of my life been a part of the Reformed Church in America, and being
outside at this point in my life is the most surprising thing that has ever
happened to me. And yet, I don’t want simply to turn my back on that which has
been my whole life, but continue in a dialogue and conversation to the extent that
that is desired. And so, I am here today to do that very thing. But, I want to be
clear, I am not here because I am trying to win a battle or make a point. I’m not
on a crusade. I was not on a crusade in Michigan, either. I was simply ministering
in my own concrete community of faith, in my own congregation, and there was
no idea ever that what we had discovered at Christ Community to be an effective
embodiment of the grace of God should be exported anywhere, to our local
community or beyond. We simply were trying to be faithful as the people of God
in that place, and what has transpired over the last year has come to us from the
outside; it is not something that originated inside, and it is not something that
has happened because we were trying to move out. I want to be very clear about
that.
I am here to be in conversation with you and to be of whatever help I can be in
lifting up aspects of the question that is before us, namely, that the grace of God
is limited to those who come to God through faith in Jesus Christ; in other words,
Christian exclusivity. I think there is no one that would deny that we are dealing
with a very important question for the Christian church, but I begin with that
disclaimer, that I am here for conversation and not as a crusader, not moving out
now to convince the whole world, after all, that I was right or that I am right.
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The other thing I want to say is that I am a Christian minister of the Gospel. I
have for 36 years been involved in the ministry. Four of those years I was in
graduate study in The Netherlands. Other than that, I have been a pastor and
have preached every week, been involved in pastoral care, preaching, teaching,
just a garden variety pastor, committed to the local congregation – all of that
done as a Christian minister. I preach the grace of God as it has appeared in Jesus
Christ and no other message. We don’t get up on Sunday morning at Christ
Community and say, “Well, let’s look at the menu this morning. Shall we have a
pinch of Buddhism or a dimension of Islam, or whatever.” No, I preach every
week from the scriptures. I try to be faithful in my wrestling with scripture and its
interpretation, and to proclaim the God whom I have come to experience as the
one embodied in Jesus Christ. So, let me be clear on that, as well.
I suppose there will be some other things that will come out as the day
progresses, but I think I want to say those things by way of introduction. I am
here at your invitation, not at my initiative, and I’m here as one who continues to
be what he has always been and that is a minister of the Gospel of the grace of
God in Jesus Christ our Lord.
I’ve tried to think of how I could best get the story, the issue before us, and
sometimes to tell one’s own story is about as effective as anything. Obviously, in
the last weeks and months I have had good opportunity to try and track the
pilgrimage on which I have been engaged, and the way that I have come to where
I am presently in my understanding of Christian faith and other faiths. It seems
to me that, when I was in New Jersey in the middle 60s when my “little system”
was coming up short in terms of being able to deal with the experience of a pastor
in a congregation, and my ability to interpret life, understand human experience,
and to preach my theological system, my understanding of the faith, was limited.
I came out of a very conservative nurture and continued in that very conservative
track through my college and seminary education. I went into the ministry a very
conservative, evangelical pastor and I certainly would have been at the far right of
the theological spectrum. Human experience has a way of humbling us and
creating situations in which our tight little systems are not adequate. I was
beginning to run into that when I made the move from Spring Lake to New
Jersey.
My first four years were in Spring Lake, Michigan. At the time that I came to New
Jersey, the Reformed Church was engaged in some controversy over a Church
School curriculum, Covenant Life Curriculum, and this was the first time in
which the church at large was being introduced to some of the critical views of the
scripture. It was really very good stuff and very responsible and actually
conservative material. But, nonetheless, there were those who were threatened by
some of the things that were handled in the Covenant Life Curriculum. I began to
study that curriculum and it began to address some of the questions that I was
having in my own pastoral ministry. It was time for me to go to Europe in 1967
and find out if I really had anything to say, if I had a Gospel to preach.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
I went there wanting, for the first time in my life, to know the truth. I went
through my whole college and seminary education seeking to buttress the
presuppositions with which I came, those I had imbibed with my mother’s milk. I
did not want to be stretched and I was not aware of it, but I was very defensive
against those questions that put my faith understanding in question. But one
eventually has to deal with that and so I went to Europe and found a very
wonderful mentor in Hendrikus Berkhof who was at the University of Leiden. He
helped me identify what the real questions were. Berkhof would say, when I
would come with a question, “Ja, ja, ja. That’s the question.”
I said, “I know that’s the question. What’s the answer?”
He’d say, “Ja, ja, ja, ja. Just live with the question for a while.”
So I did and they were four wonderful years in which I imbibed as much as I
could. I read and read and read and wrote and read and wrote and thought, and
had, what was for me, my first real immersion in an educational experience.
I sat in his study one day and I said to him, “You know, in the Reformed Church,
we can’t really deal very effectively with any of the specific theological questions
that come up because we have never dealt with the issue of the authority of
scripture and how scripture is to be used. It seems as though with everything
we’re debating, we never debate the issue. We debate the issue in terms of what it
will do to our doctrine of scripture.”
I think at the time it may have been the ordination of women to the Elder-Deacon
office, and I could see that nobody was asking whether women could be spiritual,
whether women could be gifted, whether women could be effective leaders in the
church. It seemed to me that the issue always came down to, “Well, if we grant
that, what will happen to First Timothy, whatever, and what about this passage?,”
so that it was not the issue itself, but it was that authority which informs all of our
decisions. I said to Berkhof, “What I really should do is write a dissertation on the
place of scripture and the use of scripture in the church,” and he looked at me
and he said, “You go back to the Reformed Church in America and the United
States of America and do that, do you know what they will do to you?” And so, I
came back and I didn’t do that. But I was aware that that needed to be dealt with.
Then, after some years, having returned to Spring Lake where I had continued to
wrestle with the faith, I went to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1983
where Hans Küng was a guest, giving public lectures on Monday night. They were
held at Racham Auditorium, with overflow crowds. He gave the lectures, now
published, entitled Eternal Life? On Tuesday afternoon I was engaged in a crossdiscipline seminar with him for three hours. There were about 35 of us from the
various schools of the university, medical people, artists, a couple of pastors – a
marvelous experience. He was working from mimeographed material on
paradigm change in theology – wrestling with that whole shift in perspective that
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
comes when current data put the present conception of things into question.
Then there seems to arise a new model that can include and embrace the fresh
data and there is a significant shift.
It happens, of course, in the sciences, and there was a significant book by Thomas
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he said this is actually
what happens in the natural sciences. Hans Küng and David Tracey of the
University of Chicago had gathered a consultation in Tübingen prior to 1983
about the application of paradigm shift through theological understanding. So I
really got into that paradigm shift dimension early on. Küng helped me to
understand that, in all of my training, I had come up with the scriptures as the
authoritative word of God and all of human experience, the ongoing human
experience, really had little impact on the faith understanding that came out of
the scriptures. I had one pole to which I was lashed, and yet life was going on “out
here.” Küng helped me to see that the theological task is to live between the two
poles – that which is given, the history of Israel and Jesus in our scripture, and
ongoing human experience, the present horizon. And that theology does not pass
along through history untouched by historical circumstance, some deposit of
faith as though it fell out of heaven, simply to be delivered to the next generation
as it is. Rather, theology is that hermeneutical task that constantly runs between
the given revelation that is in the scripture and the ongoing human experience, so
that from the scripture the present is illuminated and the present elicits new life
and new understanding from the scripture. There is a coordination between those
two poles.
And when I saw that, I realized that my whole experience prior to that had been
living out of this pole of the scripture without any significant regard as to what
was happening out in the world. I also realized that what had happened in the
liberalism of the 19th century, that had come on bad times, was that there was
such an earnest attempt to understand and accommodate what was going on in
the world that the pole of the scripture was not taken seriously. I began to realize
that the task really for us in the church is to live between that biblical story and
our ongoing story, and to understand our lives in the light that comes from the
story, the founding story, but that the founding story has spurred a tradition that
has resources that are rich, being enlarged through ongoing human experience,
that can continue to be reclaimed to bring the faith to fresh expression as we go
on in our pilgrimage. For me, I think that was a very significant moment.
On Monday night Küng spoke on heaven and hell and purgatory, judgment and
death to overflow crowds in this vast educational institution where only a
professor’s half time is given to a program in religious studies in this huge state
university. There is just a smidgeon of interest in the whole phenomena of
religion. This was a new experiment at the time, Küng being the first guest
lecturer in Religious Studies. The Vatican was putting the heat on him in
Germany; they wanted him put under censure for his views, and he came to the
University of Michigan almost on a lark in order to have some leverage back in
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Tübingen because Michigan did say to him, “If you want to stay here, you can stay
here.” He didn’t do that because, when you’re a professor at Tübingen in the
German system, you want to retire out of that system, which he has done.
So there I was, preaching every week, and now I see in this huge secular arena
sophisticated, educated, cultured, cultural despisers of religion sitting for two
hours to hear the rather difficult English of this Catholic theologian talk about
death, purgatory, hell, judgment, and I said to myself, ”Good grief, I don’t even
preach on those things in my own pulpit. In this secular setting I gathered with
people, fully human, listening to lectures on such issues. Maybe they know, too,
they’re going to die, and they must wonder, and maybe they’ve lost someone, and
they must wonder.”
And so it was like a revelation to me that there was this intense existential
interest in the human person, whether they were connected with the institutional
religion or had any particular faith profession. Those end questions engaged
them, and I came home and began my own search. That is what has gotten me
into trouble, because I discovered the expanse, the extent of the grace of God was
much broader than I had ever dreamed.
It was about that time that the Reformed Church founded a journal of theological
investigation whose purpose was to stimulate theological discussion in the
Reformed Church and, because I was a pastor at a rather safe pastorate, I seemed
to be the one that got the assignments to write on the issues that would address
the Reformed Church in terms of those questions that we felt needed to be talked
about. And so, an early article was on purgatory.
I never would have believed that I would have been concerned at all about
purgatory, but I began to see what was the wisdom of the ancient church and
what was behind that whole construction of things, and to recognize that, as a
child of the Reformation, I never got a fair shot at understanding what that was
all about because we were in such sharp reaction precisely at that point in the 16th
century. And then I began to investigate the extent of God’s grace and I found out
that, in the early church, there was a strong strain of universalism, that the grace
of God would finally be triumphant in regard to all. And I found some high
Calvinists who simply were more logical than some of the rest who also came to
that same position of the ultimate triumph of the grace of God And then, of
course, there was my own mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof and his reference to Karl
Barth and to the contemporary discussion of that issue. And so, again, I wrote in
Perspectives. The “Letters to the Editor” revealed that some people were upset.
There were also a few positive comments and there was engagement. However, it
was in black and white. Over the next decade I continued to address these issues
in the journal until 1995, when I published an article on interreligious dialogue
and my recognition that we had within the Christian church some serious
thinking to do before we could enter authentically into religious dialogue. That
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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got me to where I am and there was never any question about it until the spring
of 1995.
The catalyst for the discussion on salvation was the fact that we allowed a group
from the Metropolitan Community Church ministering largely to gay and lesbian
people simply to use our chapel. When that was called in question, then one thing
led to another, and then my theological views were called in question and
eventually the Classis recognized, I think, there wasn’t much point in pursuing
the original issue, but they were deeply concerned, then, about this question of
salvation apart from Christ.
This has become a conversation within the Reformed Church and the question, as
it has been phrased, is “Can non-believers be saved?” I want to say that that is the
wrong question. I’m not interested in the question of whether non-believers can
be saved. I am interested in the question of whether those who have a yearning
for God and seek after God and who pursue that yearning and that seeking in
another faith tradition can be saved, because we are not talking about people who
are Christian and the rest of the world as non-believers. We are talking about a
world that is laced with believers of many stripes, and we are living in a context
today, a global context in which these people are our neighbors and our children
are bringing home people of other faiths and presenting them as their future
spouses. We meet them at work and down the street there is a temple or a
meditation place or a shrine of some sort that was not the case some years ago.
So, the question is not whether non-believers can be saved. The question is “Must
I insist that there is salvation through Jesus Christ alone?”
Now, let me be very clear again. Before the Classis of Muskegon I said, “If you will
scratch out one word, I’ll sign your document” that affirms that there is salvation
through Jesus Christ. I believe that and I would affirm that, and I have affirmed
that. But, when you tell me that I must say it is through Jesus Christ alone, then I
don’t know what to do with Jewish folks that I have come to know so well and
have become so fond of, working in the Jewish-Christian Committee for Dialogue
in the West Shore area of Michigan. Then, what do I do with all of those about me
in our world today who seem to manifest all of the fruits of the Spirit, whose
questions are my questions, and whose experience seems to be the same
experience as mine – what am I to do with them? The issue is not whether or not
there is salvation through Jesus Christ. It is whether or not I must be held to an
exclusivist position that says through Jesus Christ and through no other, and that
apart from Jesus Christ there is only condemnation, there is no salvation and
light, and no eternal life for any who come not through Jesus Christ our Lord.
That I will not say. And that is the issue upon which I have been put out.
Obviously you might expect me to argue my theological conclusion on the basis of
scripture. But that is not as simple as it sounds because, as has been claimed in
many arguments, anything can be “proven” by scripture. I learned from Professor
Berkhof the rich diversity of the biblical witness, for example, on the very
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
question of the extent of God’s grace. In his Well-Founded Hope, he has a chapter
entitled “The Double Image of the Future.”
He deals seriously with the biblical witness but concludes that Scripture
leaves us with a double track. Countless attempts have been made to
subsume one track of texts under the other by ingenious “exegetical tricks”
but, Berkhof concludes, “we cannot smooth out this contradiction in the
New Testament.” All that we read abut the future, texts offering
consolation and texts of warning, do not “fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.”
In the case of the passages giving warning, these present the gospel in its
nature as a call to decision; the passages offering consolation give hope
and the promise of eventual salvation of all.
We must hear both witnesses; we must not reduce one to the other. But we
cannot simply allow them to stand with no link between them. Berkhof
suggests we pronounce them “one after the other,” for “only the person
who has learned to tremble at the possibility of rejection may speak about
universal salvation.”
When my article, “The Habit of God’s Heart” was published in 1988, I was the
Preaching Professor at Western Theological Seminary. The piece caused a stir. I
was called before the Executive Committee of the seminary board to give an
account of myself. I remember distinctly when I suggested that scripture spoke in
more than one voice on the matter of the extent of God’ s grace, I was
immediately “corrected.” Scripture interpreted by scripture leaves no ambiguity –
salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone.
I remember a conversation with the wonderful Lutheran bishop, the late Krister
Stendahl, who was a guest at our Jewish-Christian Dialogue. He spoke of the
brilliant apologist for Christianity, C. S. Lewis. He spoke of how much he loved
the Lewis of Shadowland and of A Grief Observed, the result of his grievous loss
of his wife to cancer. Lewis, in his grief expressing the loss of his love, spoke the
language of the heart. But, said Stendahl, when Lewis argues for the existence of
God, the incarnation, the atonement, I don’t take him seriously because he is so
brilliant he could be just as effective on the other side of the question.
So it is with the Bible. As Luther argued, scripture is a wax nose; one can be as
honest and responsible as possible and have someone on the other side of the
question come up with a contrary conclusion. And thus I have not really engaged
in the whole biblical debate.
That said, it does not imply that I do not believe there is a legitimate biblical
witness to God’s universal grace. In Luke’s Acts we read the story of the
movement of the Gospel beyond its community of origin – to the vast Gentile
world. The story of Peter and Cornelius is paradigmatic, showing the expansive
movement of the Gospel to the Gentile world. Luke records the story and then
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
has Peter rehearse the whole experience before the Jerusalem Elders who called
him to account for going to the Gentiles. In light of his concrete experience of the
Spirit of God anointing the Gentiles, Peter says, according to Luke’s account,
“…who was I that I could hinder God?”
An even larger crisis was generated by Paul who brought the Gospel intentionally
to the Gentiles. Acts 15 records the story of the first “Church Council.” The Jesus
Movement was at a crisis point; a decision had to be made concerning the nonJews who were embracing the Gospel and becoming a growing part of the Jesus
Movement that, to begin with, was a Jewish movement.
Peter recounted his experience with Cornelius. In Luke’s recounting of the story,
he has Peter declare,
And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them
the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith
he has made no distinction between them and us…we believe that we will
be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. (Acts 15:811)
Following Peter’s witness Barnabas and Paul told of “the signs and wonders God
had done through them among the Gentiles” (verse 12). And then the leader of
the Jerusalem Church, James, gave his “decision that we should not trouble those
Gentiles who were turning to God…” (verse 19).
Luke is recording the most momentous decision that early Jesus Movement was
called upon to make. Luke records the pivot point of the whole Jesus Movement.
Gentiles could become Jews. That was not new. What was new in Paul’s
argument is that Gentiles can become God’s children without first becoming
Jews.
Paul is arguing for Grace, the Grace of God embracing the Gentile apart from
those specifically Jewish rituals, circumcision, dietary laws, whatever, and Paul’s
experience is that God is embracing the Gentiles through faith as Israel had been
embraced through all the generations. Peter’s experience is that God is embracing
a Cornelius and his household, the Holy Spirit falls on them, the waters of
baptism are applied to them. In Jerusalem the leadership asks, what’s going on
here? That was a critical point because they could have said it would be necessary
for the Gentiles to come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, but they would have to
do it by way of full participation in the Mosaic legislation following the Torah.
And they decided not. They decided that the grace of God could embrace the
Gentile without that Gentile becoming a Jew, and that was a paradigmatic shift.
Paul said God is doing a new thing; God is creating one new humanity. In
Romans 9, 10 and 11, Paul is struggling because he does not see how his Jewish
brothers and sisters can fail to see what he sees in Jesus. How they can fail to see
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
what God is doing in history. He says, “My heart is deeply distressed. I, myself,
would be accursed for my brothers and sisters if only they could see.” He goes on
in those three chapters struggling with that issue, and he comes to the end of that
struggle in the 11th chapter in verse 32, where he says, “God has reckoned all in
disobedience, the Jew and the Gentile, Israel and the nations, in order that God
may have mercy on all.” And then he breaks out into the one great doxology that
has no reference to Jesus Christ, just praising the eternal God, the God of Israel,
for His unsearchable ways, His inscrutable judgment, and he says, “Source, Guide
and Goal of all there is, to God be glory forever.” He finally believes that a
mystery is at work here, that Israel finally will be saved, he knows not how, and,
in the meantime, the grace of God has come to the Gentiles.
Now we are talking about a hinge point in history. We are talking about the fact
that Peter had to do that which is contrary to the scripture by which he had lived.
He could quote scripture and verse, the ritual, the tradition that would have said
don’t enter the house of Cornelius, don’t do this, don’t do that. He was going
contrary to that which had been deeply inbred in him, and he did it because he
said who can fight God? He was so inwardly compelled and the evidence, what he
saw before his eyes, made him say, “I have to do this.” And it was confirmed in
the experience.
So I would say we are at another hinge point in human history. I don’t know
where we got into it and I don’t know when we’ll get out of it, but I think that we
are living through a time of global change. We live in that period of history in
which the whole human family is experiencing its history at the same time and
together. This is a time of global consciousness, of a global community, and it
does not seem reasonable to me that the whole world is going to be evangelized
and the Gospel is going to be brought to the whole world. That was a noble dream
and a noble vision, and it was an honest response to an apocalyptic vision, that
conviction that they were standing on the end of the age and that the whole
cosmic drama would be wrapped up rather soon.
But, can you imagine that the Christian church could hold its breath for 2000
years and still be talking about the imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ? As
we approach the year 2000, are we not going to hear more and more about it?
And how can we honestly do that when we come to recognize that those New
Testament documents were written by those who believed they were at the End
and they were not at the End.
The Jewish scholar Paula Fredrikson of Boston University has written From
Jesus to Christ, and she says, “Why did the Jesus Jewish movement fade out first,
and why did the Christian movement become a Gentile movement?” She says,
first of all, because the one who was to come didn’t come. Nothing happened.
Three times in the Gospel of John it speaks about being put out of the synagogue.
Why? Well, if you were a Jew and if you had responded and believed that this
Jesus was the Messiah that you were expecting and according to the message,
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Richard A. Rhem
Page10
history was all going to end very soon and this one would return, but nothing
happened. And now the Pharisaic, Rabbinic Judaism, the movement of Judaism
after the temple which became the ascendant group, the ongoing Jewish
community – that community now is saying, “If you say Jesus was the Messiah,
you’re going to be put out of the synagogue.” And now you have to say, “Am I
going to remain with my religious heritage of all of these centuries, or am I going
to be put out of the synagogue on the chance that this one really was the Messiah
and he’s going to come back very soon?” What would you do?
Paula Fredrikson said the reason that the earliest movement faded , first of all,
nothing happened; and secondly, there were just too many Gentiles. Paul was too
successful. And if Paul succeeded, if Judaism had stayed with the church, there
would not have been the question of assimilation of the Jewish people in the 20th
century. It would have happened in the first century. And I think our world would
have been diminished for lack of that ongoing Jewish community.
Now it seems to me that what was going on then is going on now. We are not
seeing the death of the great religious traditions; we have seen their renaissance
and their resurgence, and, not only that, we have found that they contain riches
and gifts that can enhance our own understanding and our own experience. I
believe that we are faced with a global reality that calls us, in light of the power of
religion and its volatility, to discourse together, to learn from each other, to live
in mutual respect and civility in order that all together we may work toward the
building of community and world understanding.
Karl Jaspers was a German philosopher who spoke about the first axial period.
The pre-axial period was when the human family was pretty much caught up in
the rhythms of nature and the cosmos. Then the first axial period, 800-200 BCE,
independently, in three places around the globe, India and China and the eastern
Mediterranean, the great religious traditions arose. They all arose in that period
of time effecting a transformation of human consciousness, a transformation that
shaped the first axial period to the present. Ewert Cousins, Fordham University,
suggests that we may be in the second axial period and that the image for us is
that view of the globe that the astronaut has seen, that beautiful, fragile, blue
globe hanging in space. For the first time our kind has been able to look back and
see it whole and to realize that all the borders and divisions and the lines that we
draw over which we fight and for which we kill, that all of that has no reality
because we are a part of one inner-connected whole. And, if we are part of one
cosmic whole and we are part of one human family, and if we are serious that
God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, then I believe that it is
high time for us to deepen our particularity and to learn again from Jesus Christ
and all of that which has been revealed through him of the purpose and heart of
God and to recognize that God has a grander scheme and a broader purpose and
that there is so much enrichment, so much greater possibility as we live together
in the human community transcending those barriers and divisions that have
separated us.
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As I said, Krister Stendahl was in Michigan. He was at the temple on Friday
night, a Sabbath service, and then Saturday lectures, and then he preached at
Christ Community Church on Sunday morning. My son came up to me
afterwards and said, “Dad, I’ve had a religious experience,” and I said, “I know.”
He said, “This feels so right,” and I said, “I know. If it feels so right, you don’t
need an argument, do you?”
He said, “No.”
I said, “Once you have had that sense that it’s so right, then you can simply be
there and invite others to share that same sense of shared humanity. You don’t
need to prove anything or demonstrate anything.”
But, I’ll tell you, my own experience is that I have never experienced such
openness from the other and desire to hear about my Jesus than since the time I
laid down my arms and did not feel that monkey on my back of world
evangelization, but rather speaking of the grace of God in Jesus Christ and
listening and receiving and giving and taking in a mutual enhancement that
builds toward world community that is so much better than anything I have ever
known.
Thank you.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q.
The rise of fundamentalism in all world religions frightens me. How can
people engage with Christians and other fundamentalist groups when they are
willing to kill for their faith?
A.
Well, it scares me, too, and I do believe that that is part of the reason why it
is so imperative that we enter into dialogues in a broad scope. James Davison
Hunter, in his New Culture Wars, points out the fact that the breakdown in
civil discourse and in communication between people has created such a
threat throughout the world, and I think that the militant mind in the
respective traditions, there's a Jewish fundamentalism, an Islamic
fundamentalism, a Christian fundamentalism, you don't have to have a
particular badge in order to have that mentality and that mind set, and I do
believe that as the times become somewhat anxious and people become
somewhat unsteady and afraid, they tend to this kind of fanaticism and
absolutism, wanting to find security and wanting to find the answer that is
absolutely clear and simple. So to me, I don't know why, I just know that, in
such a world, at such a time it is critical that we dialogue together and open
up the channels of communication together. Now, for a lot of these things I
do not think that it is a question of being right or wrong. I mean, there's such
a broad spectrum of understanding, and there are various symbol systems
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and it's not like one will work and the rest won't. I think that we need to find
that which communicates meaning and connects us to that sense of
transcendence, meets that hunger for God, and if that is in place, then I think
that, rather than enforcing that on everyone else, in that sense of
connectedness with the transcendent to find a freedom and a resting place in
which to open oneself up to the other and thus create the bridges of
communication. So, I don't know what the answer is, but I know it's a
serious problem.
Q.
Will you describe more fully your phrase “Monkey on your back?” You applied
that to world evangelization.
A.
Did I say that this morning? Well, if I didn't, I should have. I came into the
ministry, I grew up, feeling that I had to defend God. I had to defend the faith.
I felt such an urgency; I was insecure. I didn't know how insecure I was. I
didn't know how defensive I was. But I thought it was up to me to defend
God and to keep God enthroned, and it seemed to me that it was my
responsibility that you believed correctly, that you dotted the i's and crossed
the t's and that is a terrible, terrible burden. I can remember the experience of
believing finally that God could take care of God's self, whether or not I could
defend God. Now, that was Step One. And then to believe, as well, that God
had a marvelous embrace of people who had an experience quite other than
mine, and yet which seemed to be also very similar in terms of that which it
generated within the individual. And when I could simply affirm that and not
have to change someone to my image ... I had lived with a monkey on my
back. I had to get the world to Jesus. And I had no sense of letting that in
God's hands and simply being an instrument, and so that's what I meant.
Q.
We have just heard for over an hour about the love of God for everyone, but
10% of those God has created are homosexuals who cannot change their
identity and are ostracized by the church. These are people who are looking
for God's love. How can the church deny them?
A.
Well, I don't think the church can deny them, but the church does deny them.
I have to say that this was the catalytic event that got this whole conflict
started for us because, as I said to you, we gave a group ministry, largely
lesbian and gay people, the use of our chapel. For us it was an act of
hospitality. Again, I was not looking to take on a crusade. This was not my
issue. Subsequent to what has happened, I think it should have been my issue
a long time ago. It is an issue of justice; it is an issue of the love of God and
the grace of God. I had heard stories, people pouring their heart out to me,
beautiful human beings and I thought, "My God, where was I all these years?"
Just not even concerned about this thing with people who were suffering and
being ostracized and being shunned and so, when you say how can the church
deny them, I don't know how the church can deny them love, and I will now
speak anywhere, everywhere for... In fact, I’ve got a lot of stories.
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Q.
Does God's grace extend to non-believers, too, in your theology? Could your
position be better supported by the teaching of Christ himself rather than
appealing to St. Paul? Who now holds your credentials? Will the Spring Lake
church align itself with another denomination?
A.
The congregation holds my credentials at present, and we have done some
very preliminary kind of investigation, but I have found that it's a little bit like
marriage, it's a lot easier to get in than to get out, and I'm – just scratch that
one – I'm at this advanced age, you know, and in the springtime of my
senility, and I don't know if I really want... I believe in the connectedness of
the church and I believe in mutual covenants of accountability, I believe in all
that, but I may just keep investigating long enough to where it won't be an
issue anymore, and in all that time no one will be able to criticize me for
living in splendid isolation and I'll say, "I'm working on it, I'm working on it,"
and one day they'll bury me. Sort of like Peter Paulson today, as Bob said, you
know, Paul Fries tells me that he suggested to Peter when he went into the
pastorate that he always keep a body at hand in case he needs a funeral.
Can my position better be supported by teachings of Christ? I do believe that.
Yes, I do believe that. But, you know, when you've got Dutch Calvinism in
your blood and your genes, you have to argue with Paul and I do believe, yes,
Jesus. Again, I'm hesitant to get into biblical discussions about this because
you can argue it all over the place. But, I would say that, apart from any
specific biblical reference, just the God I see in Jesus is a God that would make
me reach out and embrace my neighbor and listen to the other and live in
harmony with the other, and that's not by having a text, it is by the whole
context, the whole encounter with Jesus Christ which says to me God is
bigger than anything we've yet dreamed of, so I would agree with that.
Does God's grace extend to non-believers, too, in your theology? Yes.
Because ... I don't know. How do I know? This is what I think and that is that
God is not through with us at our death. This is what I began to wrestle with
Hans Küng and then I would never have thought that I would think twice
about purgatory and I go to these lectures and find, why did the ancient
church have this? What were they talking about? Then I read from C. S.
Lewis, his Letter to Malcolm, where he talks about purgatory as, you know,
being in the dentist's chair and when you're coming around the dentist says,
“Wash your mouth out with this." And he says, that's purgatory. I began to
read Lutheran and Reformed theologians as well as Catholic theologians who
speak about our encounter with God at our death, and so, what does it mean
to be a non-believer? What does it mean? Does it mean that I have been so
damaged by the institutional church? I'll tell you what -I could almost leave
the institutional church. This past year with that experience in the church –
I'll tell you what – if I wasn't a stubborn Hollander, I'd be out. I'm just too
ornery not to go. But then, how many people have not been damaged and hurt
by the attitudes, by the spirit, by the structures? So, non-believers - who are
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they, anyway? I don't find as many non-believers out there as I used to. I
used to know how many there were; I used to know what percentage of the
population they were, and now I found out when I don't know so much,
they're really interested and they really want to talk and I think there's
something deep down in the human spirit that can be appealed to that makes
that category of non-believer somewhat fuzzy. One of the old, early American
preachers, Lyman Abbot, said if he were a Calvinist he would be a universalist,
but he said, because I respect the human will, I cannot be a universalist
because I believe that God will not finally crush my human Yes or No. I think
God respects our Yes or No to such an extent that... So, non-believers?
Someone wants to finally say, "Not thy will be done, but my will be done?"
will God say then, "Thy will be done?" I don't know. Of course, I don't know
those answers. But, I don't think there are as many non-believers out there
as I used to.
Q.
You said that you didn't want to get into scripture, but there are a few people
here who would like you to at least address some issues. One question:
please speak on the question of the necessity of the cross of which Jesus
speaks often, particularly consider the incident of Jesus in Gethsemane
saying, "If it is possible for the cup to be removed," but God demanded
Jesus to drink of it, nonetheless.
A.
Yes. I would say that one of the areas of revision as I reflect on Christian
faith and doctrine, as I have learned it and I have preached it and taught it, is
my understanding of atonement. I think that when Jesus said, "Let this cup
pass from me," that Jesus was saying, "Bring that kingdom about, effect your
purposes apart from my having to go through with tomorrow." I think
Gethsemane was just what it appears to be and that was the real existential
struggle of Jesus in the garden at the threshold of his own death, a horrible
death, in which he could have slipped out of town and gotten away with it. I
don't think that Jesus died to bear our sins; I think Jesus died because of our
sins. I think Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived, and
his dying was the authentication of the life that he lived ,which was the
embodiment of the kingdom of God and the rule of God in the midst of
human society. And so, when he said, “Let this cup pass from me," I think he
wanted out, like I would want out. And I think when he said on the cross, "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" that's not like my Calvinist
theology said, that in that time he was experiencing the torments of hell
because God turned God's face away from Jesus in those moments. I think he
was experiencing hell; he was experiencing forsakenness. That which he had
staked his life on and pointed to and embodied was not happening. He was
dying! He was being crucified. And I think anybody that lives the way he lives
is going to end up pretty much like he ended up, and that's why most of us
are smart enough, most of the time, not to do it. And to follow the Way of
Jesus is a most radical way to go, and I'll tell you what - I'm not ready for
it.
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Q.
How do you respond to such scripture as "No one comes to the Father but by
me"?
A.
I refer people to Bishop Krister Stendahl's little paper on “From God's Point
of View, We're all Minorities.” Now, he's a New Testament scholar; I'm not.
And he says, you know, to take a text in the intimacy of conversation between
Jesus and his friends, and then to lift that up out of its context and absolutize
it as though it is the end all and the be all.... I wouldn't be in any trouble if it
weren't for John 14:6 and Acts 4:12. "No other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved." In other words, save as healed, and
they're talking about the crippled man who was just healed. And they are
saying in Acts 4:12, in your name did you do this? And Peter says, "No, not in
our name. There isn't any other name. The only name is the one Jesus, that
name. That is the healer, that Jesus who was in our midst who was the
embodiment of God who brought the healing power of God to bear."
And in 14:6, “In my Father's house there are many resting places." Krister
Stendahl says that's in the world. In the world there are many places you can
be, and so, be there. And as I go to prepare a place for you and so forth. I do
not think that one ought to take John 14:6 and try to explain it as though it
had no nuances of exclusivism because there is a genuine biblical exclusivism,
there is that track in the scripture, and I think that it is most understandable
that there would be, because the Bible, New Testament documents, this is not
a book on interreligious dialogue; this is not a book on religious philosophy;
this is a book of proclamation. This is a book written by those who believed
they were at the end of the age, that God had appeared in Jesus Christ, that
the answer was in Christ, everything was in Christ, this was their message;
this was their preaching, so, I don't think I ought to try to whitewash that
thing and say there is no possibility of constructing that kind of exclusivist
view where there is salvation through Jesus alone and no other. The only
thing that I would argue is that that's not the only voice of the scripture, and
that if we look at it in its context and in its time and then, through the
tradition of 2000 years and our present situation, you put all of those things
together, then I think that's the basis on which I would say that if Jesus said
John 14:6, which Jesus Seminar says he didn't, of course, that's too easy, isn't
it, then I think that there's the possibility of nuanced interpretation, but
maybe that's exactly what John wanted to say.
Q.
Has human experience taken precedence over the authority of scripture?
A.
Yes, I hope so. And that's why I'm in trouble, because I say things like that.
You see, and now Dr. Fries can't be that foolish because he still holds an
institutional position. But, the reason I'm in the trouble I'm in is because I
think human experience and scripture need to be in dialogue and need to be
coordinated. I need to give human experience a lot of credence in order to
make up for the first fifty years of my life, when I didn't know that human
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experience even existed. I had a text and I had a book and it didn't matter
whether human experience was being honored or regarded at all. So, I think
there is the scripture, there is the tradition, there is present human experience
and then there is the reflection of reasonable faith, and Krister Stendahl who
was with us some years ago in a dialogue with David Hartman, the Rabbi from
Jerusalem, spoke about tradition as an instrument for continuity and change.
Now, I know of tradition as an instrument for continuity. I didn't understand
it as an instrument for change. As Krister Stendahl spoke of it, I could see that
it is the living tradition that connects us with the founding story, and that
living tradition is a constant re-interpretation of the founding story in light of
ongoing human experience, so that at every point of the historical spectrum,
as you look back at this event, you see it from a bit of a different angle, you
see new wrinkles and new nuances because what goes on is also God's history
and the spirit of God is still active in the world. It’s not as though it all
happened back there and now it's just waiting for the applause at the end. We
have to constantly look at that story in light of our experience, in light of that
way we have traversed, and we do it, we use our heads, we think! And in that
mix we come to our present understanding of the faith which helps us to
interpret present human experience. So, I think that's a red herring. I think
that's a false dichotomy. I don't think you can understand the Bible apart from
human experience, and I don't think that human experience apart from the
critique of the founding story will ever connect you to the transcendent. I
think that both of them have to live in tension.
Q.
How do you view Buddha and Krishna?
A.
Hardly ever do. I don't know, and frankly, I am an incurable Christian
theologian and I have not really dipped with any breadth or depth into the
world of religious dialogue. The only specific relationship I've had is with the
Jewish community which has been a very enriching kind of relationship, but I
am not a scholar of world religions. However, when I hear someone like John
Hick who advocates a pluralist position, or when I hear someone like Huston
Smith, then I sense that perhaps if I am going to make sense of what they tell
me about the authenticity of that spiritual experience, then I would say that
the spirit of God can take up residence within Buddha, Krishna. I think that the
historical, concrete figure may be agent and instrument of the Spirit of God,
and that there have been those in whom that transcendence came to shining
expression to a degree far beyond that which is true of us ordinary mortals. So,
I think where there are great religious leaders, if there is truth there, I would
guess it is the truth of God.
Q.
Where or how do you fit in the 250,000 Jewish people who have come to
believe in Jesus as Messiah since 1967, and who believe that the Messiah is
still to be preached to their own people?
A.
I am aware that there is such a movement. I just got a letter from Isaac
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Rottenberg who wrote to a Rabbi in New York City about the Jesus Jewish
movement and the fact that that ought to be a part of the agenda of the
discussion, the dialogue between Christianity and Judaism. I think in all of
the religious traditions there ought to be the possibility of crossing over. I
believe that one ought to deepen one's own tradition and one's own
particularity. In other words, don't hear me say that you ought to put all the
traditions into a blender and homogenize them and come out with some new
kind of mush. Let's be authentically what we are. Let's even deepen what we
are. Because I do believe that the universal is accessed only through the
particular. But, I think that there should always be the possibility for a Jewish
person to see Jesus and say, "Messiah!" And if that is the authentic
experience of that person, wonderful. Ironically, in the Muskegon Classis in
the last two years, I'm the one who has baptized two Jews, adult Jews! I
almost did it with a bad conscience. I said, "Are you sure you want to do
this? You know, you don't really have to do this," but they wanted to do that.
Okay. But, on the other hand, seriously, about myself, maybe I'll join the
synagogue. I could become a Jew because I see Jesus very much in his
Jewishness and to follow Jesus and practice Judaism, live out of the Torah, so
if I want to do that, I think the Rabbi should receive me. But, all I'm saying is
that you can cross over, pass over, if that is where you find that connects you,
God bless you. And if you are a Jew and you want to find in Jesus the
Messiah today and you want to tell your fellow Jewish people about that, I
think that's witness, that's fine, that's fine. I respect that.
Q.
If your views moved the Reformed Church closer to the Unitarian position, if
so, what would be gained for the church body, and what might be lost?
A.
The doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery and I can understand how the church,
seeking to come to terms with the raw material of its experience, its
Christological creedal formulas, I understand. I understand what those
doctrinal symbols are pointing to and seeking to communicate. Would my
views move the church more toward Unitarianism? Maybe, but not
necessarily, because I think that, even within the Jewish tradition, that which
comes to expression in the doctrine of the Trinity, there are echoes of that in
Judaism, as well. And so, I think that that is not necessarily the issue of
where I would go. I would say this: I understand the impetus to Unitarianism
when it happened. I can understand why there was such a movement and such
a development, and I'm not nearly as scandalized by it as once I was or
probably some of you would think I should be. But, I want to maintain the
embodiment of God in the flesh of Jesus. That's the God I know. That's the
God I see, and I am not as impressed with some of the contemporary
discussions of the Trinity where that's reflective of community within a
godhead which is modeled after community of humankind - frankly, it never
really grabbed me, but that's for esoteric theologians like Dr. Fries. I mean, you
know, we wouldn't need seminaries, we wouldn't need such brilliance if there
were not those kinds of questions to think about.
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Q.
Will you please respond to the question once posed to Karl Barth –
“Professor, will there be a hell?”
A.
Hell, no. I think that Hell is the experience of separation from God and I do
believe that I believe in judgment. I believe that no one will get away with
anything. Thank God. True for all of us. So that there will be this authentic
encounter with God so that my life will be there and I will face my life, and
then, you know you have to talk in symbols and images. I love The Great
Divorce, where C.S. Lewis says on the other side of death you can sort of
float around in those misty grey flats as long as you want to, and then if you
want to get on board the bus a little farther in, a little farther up, okay. You get
up there and say, "Ooh, this is too bright. I think I like it down below," the
ambience of the misty flats. But, it is always the individual in authentic
encounter with God. God is not mocked and I will see myself consciously in
the presence of God. I believe in judgment. But, I believe that judgment is
redemptive. I think that in the scriptures that judgment is always for salvation.
So, Hell for as long as you want it, but it doesn't have as many folks in it as it
used to have, for me, and it doesn't last as long as it used to last.
Q.
Dick, it would have seemed that Joseph Campbell addressed this issue
without the controversy, why is it now considered controversial?
A.
Well, Joseph Campbell wasn't talking within the rather narrow limits of the
Reformed Church in America. I mean, Joseph Campbell had a world stage and
the whole mythology tradition of which, of course, he was expert. I cannot
believe that this issue is of such interest that it would get on the front page of
the New York Times. I can't believe it. Others have said it better; they've said
it years and decades and centuries ago more eloquently, more explicitly. I do
not know why now this issue is so big. I think it's reflective, perhaps, of the
church being afraid, being threatened. And rather than in faith saying, "What
in the world is going on?" and "Is there something bigger? Does God have a
grander scheme that is more than I ever, ever conceived of?” Rather, there's
this growing in, and why it is now, I don't know. I don't feel like I have said
anything new. I've not said anything very well. I am pretty much mainstream,
down the middle. In my context? No, but in the broader human context,
certainly, and even within the broader Reformed Church, I believe that I
would come somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. So, it baffles me.
Q.
As a seminary student that shares your views, should I consider a longer
engagement, both live together for a while, or break it off now?
A.
If I answered that in all honesty, I would be answering out of a deep
woundedness that would not be a fair answer. I am wounded. The church has
hurt me. And I should not be giving counsel to anybody for another year or
two.
Q.
Why is there no movement to change our creedal statements? Why are we
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stuck in 15th and 16th century statements?
A.
I said to the Classis of Muskegon that I would be willing to sign the formula
for ordination which speaks of those statements as faithful, historical
witnesses to the Christian faith. I do believe that those statements were
authentic statements of faith. They were affirmations; they were
proclamations. In their context they addressed the questions and the issues
of that time. It's simply a human quality - we tend to say it, the
movement erupts, there is this prophetic flame, there is an eloquent
statement, and then we absolutize it and we perpetuate it through history
as though it no longer will be touched by ongoing historical experience. It
happens all the time. It happens in every tradition. You don't have to be
the Reformed Church in America, and I think that's the question. Until we
can honor our creedal tradition as being a faithful expression in a given
context, recognizing that that faith needs constant translation and fresh
expression - until we do that, we'll be going through the torment of this
past year in Michigan. Historical consciousness is a relatively late arrival
on the scene of the human disciplines. I think that science of history,
historiography, is an 18™ century phenomena, and it, when it really
soaked into the human psyche… I mean we all think historically today. It
is the very lens through which we see everything, but we have somehow
or other compartmentalized our faith and our theological expression, and
made out as though those expressions do not need to continue to bring
new light through translation in light of ongoing experience. I don't know.
I don't know why we can't learn that. I've learned it.
I said in New Brunswick Seminary when John Beardsley - John
Beardsley, where are you? What year did you go to New Brunswick?
Could it have been '64? I sat there on behalf of Western Theological
Seminary and stood in your procession and John Leese gave a lecture,
and John Leese's lecture pointed out the historical condition of every
creedal statement, and it was like a light went on, and I sat there and
thought, why didn't I understand that in my first 30 years? Why didn't I
know that? And then I could see. It happened. It's just amazing to me, but
I can remember it like it was yesterday. The historical conditionedness.
You want to read a great story? The Presbyterian Controversy by Bradley
Longfield, the fundamentalist controversy from 1920 to 1936 in the
Presbyterian Church, the one where _________came out and started
Westminster Seminary. Henry Sloane Coffin, I think, Robert McCartney,
William Jennings Bryant, anyway, six of these outstanding church leaders,
and the controversy of those, assembly after assembly, where the
fundamentalists in the decade of the 20s, it is an amazing story, and Jay
Gresham Machen said this is the deposit of faith and this thing goes down
through history and nothing touches it.
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I can remember as a student reading Machen who said never go down on the
playing field. They'll slaughter you. Stay in the citadel of faith. Okay, you got it
here, stick there, just keep saying it. Fundamentalism is simply the reiteration
of yesterday's answers to today's questions, and so, you don't go down. He
said, don't get out of the citadel and go down there. In other words, you can't
reason with those people. Don't draw swords with those people. Don't dare
try to go mind to mind, thought to thought. No encounter, because they'll
slay you, because if you have the citadel of faith, and you have this pure
source of revelation, you just keep repeating it. Well, to think that that
deposit of faith can just sort of move through history with all of the... was it
Einstein who said after the explosion of the first atomic bomb? Everything is
changed, except our thinking. I would say that, on the threshold of the year
2000, if the church would open its eyes, it would have to say everything has
changed and it's time we think about it. And then it's a question of whether
one really believes in God, really has faith, you see. I believe in God. I trust
God for the future. I think it's going to be great. I'm going to keep preaching.
Q.
What can be done by a Reformed Church minister to engage in a serious
Christian-Jewish dialogue where the Consistory is opposed to this
dialogue?
A.
Take a call. I don't think you can do it without leadership in tune with it. The
only reason I've survived this past year is because my own congregation has
been wonderfully solid and supportive. If my congregation were torn up, I
would be torn up and I would be out of here because I am not a fighter. I
don't go around looking for confrontation and I couldn't stand it if my own
people were not together in this thing. So, I would be very hesitant to
recommend a minister or a church leader of any sort to get involved in that
which is not affirmed by his or her own leadership. It's a formula for disaster, I
think.
Q.
Of course, a lot of things can feel right, even demonic persecution which
takes the persecutor beyond need for argument. What are the critical criteria
for putting holds on affirming all kinds of behaviour, such as your ouster …?
A.
Well, you see, I think that if we operate with a biblical tradition, with the
biblical story, with the Christian tradition in a concrete community of faith,
and if we are in dialogue together and in conversation together, then I think
that we'll make some mistakes, but I think we'll correct ourselves, too. I trust,
basically, the people. I think that there's a terrible gap between the academy
and the congregation. Your pastors have known a lot of things they've never
told you about over many, many years, and my experience has been that I can
trust my people with anything I'm thinking about, anything I'm toying with,
and it's a community and the Spirit of God lives in that community. And so, I
have the biblical story, I have the tradition, I have the concrete community.
And then, I think we test the spirits, and sometimes we make mistakes, but
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page21
we have the freedom to fail, and then we can turn around and say that didn't
work or the consequences of that were not foreseen. I'm going to back down
from that. I don't know any other magic, but I do think that the Christian
community can be trusted.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Series
Address to The Synod of Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America
Location
The location of the interview
Reformed Church Synod of Mid-Atlantics,
Ramapo, New Jersey
References
Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, 1960,1996, Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 1979, 1986 C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 1964, Richard A. Rhem, "The Habit of God's Heart," Perspectives, Sept., 1988.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RA-3-19961004
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1996-10-04
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Title
A name given to the resource
Regarding the Conflict About Christian Exclusivity
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 4, 1996 entitled "Regarding the Conflict About Christian Exclusivity", as part of the series "Address to The Synod of Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America", at Reformed Church Synod of Mid-Atlantics, Ramapo, New Jersey. Tags: Inclusive Grace, Nature of God, Pluralism, Universal Grace, Scripture, Authority. Scripture references: Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, 1960,1996, Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 1979, 1986 C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 1964, Richard A. Rhem, "The Habit of God's Heart," Perspectives, Sept., 1988.
.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Authority
Inclusive Grace
Nature of God
Pluralism
Scripture
Universal Grace